Toccata and Fugue
by AHS
Summary: Three years have passed since Syria, and the Rippners live in New York City with Jackson working as a banker. Following the death of a former associate, however, Jackson and Lisa's lives turn upside down in a disturbing return to the past.
1. Late July 2009

Alexithymia. First explained in the 1960s, this mental condition is typically found in males who were either raised by bad parents or suffered abuse in early life. In studying alexithymic individuals, psychiatrists and neurologists have found that there appears to be a mental disconnect between emotional sensations and the actual output of emotions. These people, whilst not being able to express their own emotions, also cannot understand the emotions of others. Because of this, alexithymics are rarely in meaningful, healthy relationships with others; for an alexithymic, it is only after a few years of constant therapy with one person that a real relationship is able to develop.

Even with therapy involving mostly medication and support, the alexithymic is still subject to outbursts of the disease. Everything may be wonderful one day, but the next day, the alexithymic may display narcissistic rage, be over-controlling, be hyper-irritable, show distrust for people he or she normally cares for and more.

Alexithymia was what brought Jackson Rippner to the attention of Matthias Poulain. When the newspapers reported on the ten-year-old Albany boy who killed his parents and was found more concerned about the state of the kitchen than the fact that his mother was almost headless, his interest was definitely piqued. Sitting with his son in the New York headquarters of his World Society, he read the story and was fascinated. Consults with psychiatrists and internists promised that the boy would do something else that would have him catapulted from his aunt's house in Schenectady, and as soon as that happened, he would be able to intervene to take the boy. When he was finally moved, he was under the care of a non-Society psychiatrist whose therapy threatened the boy's special condition in the mind of Poulain, so he sent his own psychiatrist to handle the situation.

It was only a few months later that Jackson unknowingly became a scion of the Poulain family.

In a complete disregard for patient relations, his new psychiatrist failed to mention anything to him about the disease they'd detected in him despite the fact that Jackson was now old enough to understand the condition. In fact, in retrospect, he actually _encouraged_ the disease with his therapy style, which went against every study done to that time on alexithymia. Currently, the recognised standard for alexithymic therapy is medication, education and the establishment of a stable relationship with a person who really cares that the person break away from the disease. Dr Philip Greene cared more on reflecting on Jackson's past and dealing in psychotherapy, both methods which are discouraged by psychiatrists studying the disorder.

By the time Jackson was seventeen, the age at which he planned his first assassination, he had an absolutely amazing disregard for the sanctity of human life, and Matthias Poulain couldn't have possibly been happier. As he was again rejoicing at his find, however, tragedy occurred: on a moderately run-of-the-mill job, his only son was killed by his assassin who then turned the gun on herself. This was a very unexpected kink, but he was bolstered by the thought of the boy who, at the time, was spending his summers on the Continent planning high-profile assassinations, treating them like he was just planning what to have for dinner.

Another threat to the condition came when Jackson's assigned keeper, a girl named Melissa Bayley, became aware of the disease and planned to tell him about it. Immediately, Poulain met with her and gave her the kind information that if she didn't go along with their plans for her future, they would gladly kill her, her parents and her younger sister. It was amazing how quickly she gave up her allegiance to the Swiss man's protégé.

With the problem moved aside, he got more and more moody and had more and more bouts of what the theses called 'narcissistic rage.' An absolutely spoiled child who didn't know any differently, Jackson still didn't know about alexithymia when he signed the papers to make him the next head of Poulain's society. However, only a little time passed before he called, very upset, to tell Poulain that he wanted out of the Society. Assuming that it was just another fit of his narcissistic rage, the old man gave him another job, promising to let him off once the job was successfully completed.

He never expected his protégé to use Lisa, a woman so enamoured of him and so caring that she was willing to deal with Jackson's cold-heartedness. If Poulain had reviewed the woman's case file more, he would have seen that as a child, she spent a lot of time going from mental hospital to mental hospital with her psychiatrist mother as her father took on heavy caseloads at his law practise. In a country where mental illness was an amazing stigma, she understood and felt something bordering on empathy for her mother's patients. Even the most dangerous mental patient wasn't a threat to her. In other words, it was stupid of Poulain to allow him to see her. Another thing he never noticed with Jackson was his obsession over this woman. He had been warned by Ian Dower, Jackson's Americas assassin, but at the time, it was of no concern to him—he expected Jackson to just feel the thrill of calculated death and come crawling back to the Society on his knees.

A couple of weeks passed, and according to _Le Figaro_, everything that could have gone wrong did. Immediately following the incident, he paid for all of his medical treatments until it became obvious that Lisa wasn't going to give up on him and that he was slowly coming around to accepting her. In her last order received from Poulain, Elisabeth Millwood attempted to slowly kill Jackson medically—after all, as parents have said for years, 'I created you; I can destroy you'—but her attempts were thwarted by the over-caring Lisa.

'She ruined him,' Matthias Poulain said breathily, tapping his fingers on the desk as he looked at the society page of the _New York Times_. Smiling back at him was a sauve-looking, tuxedo-clad Jackson Rippner holding a flute of champagne up to the camera, his arm around his wife's waist. Lisa was bent slightly, laughing as she looked up at his face, holding what appeared to be a glass of orange juice to her chest. He focused on her rounded stomach, narrowing his eyes in distaste.

He threw the paper forcefully at the woman who sat across from him, and she took it, snapping it so that it stood straight. With her eyebrows raised haughtily, she studied the picture and its caption. 'How proper that they would be at the premiere of _Armida._'

'Never seen it,' grumbled Poulain, leaning back in his chair.

Looking over the newspaper, she just smiled.

Raising a hand to his mouth to stifle a cough, Poulain sighed and looked past the blonde to the door. 'And you're certain this will work?'

'If everything you tell me is true, then it should go perfectly,' she said, her speech very measured. 'But you must follow everything I say.'


	2. 1 August 2009

Lisa Rippner felt like the Buddha, the Bu-Dai Buddha.

She was neither enlightened nor particularly friendly, and she didn't assume that she'd eventually take the place of Gautama Buddha; she wasn't even feeling particularly fat today. She did however seem to always have her husband rubbing her stomach like she was some rotund golden statue at a Chinese restaurant.

As she stood and made dinner, he'd come up behind her and rub her stomach. Sitting watching TV with the kids at night, he'd sit next to her and rub her stomach. Before he left for work every morning, he'd kiss her and yes, rub her stomach. And now, as they lied in bed, Jackson was propped up on pillows reading financial reports, left hand snaked under her tank top and rubbing her stomach yet again. Holding her magazine to her side, she watched for a few long moments before smacking it down on the duvet and looking at him. He didn't seem to notice or care.

'Stop that.'

'Hm?' he questioned softly, neither stopping his reading nor rubbing.

'My stomach,' she said, trying to squirm out from under his hand. 'Stop rubbing my stomach.'

'Does your stomach hurt?' he asked breezily as though he'd only picked up one word, again not stopping.

'It's _annoying_,' she replied, reaching down to tug at the bottom hem of her tank top. 'Stop!'

Normally, this would lead to a massive tickling fight, but Jackson just took his hand away, reaching up to push his glasses higher on his nose before reabsorbing himself in the financial reports from work. Lisa kept hold of the bottom of her tank top, looking at him with her eyebrows raised pitifully. A couple of long minutes passed, each second heralded by the long, thin hand on the clock in their room.

'What is it, Lisa?' Jackson finally asked, but again didn't bother looking at her.

She looked down, pressing her hand atop her stomach, which had started having a greater arc over the last week or so. 'Are you feeling okay?'

'I'm feeling fine,' he said detachedly. 'How are you?'

'Has something happened at work?' she asked, sitting up and looking at him with concern. 'Or did I do something?'

He dropped the papers to his lap, rolling his eyes to look at the ceiling as he tipped his head, his mouth open slightly. Dropping his head back down, he looked over at her, very plainly annoyed.

'Did I not just say to you that everything is fine?'

She pinched her lips together before turning her back to him and slipping down under the duvet. Yanking at the duvet, she pulled it over her shoulder with a little angry grunt. As much as she hated to admit it, this had become the norm. Only months after returning from Syria, they had moved with their children to New York City. Jackson immediately started a job with Crédit Suisse and spent a lot of his time on planes between New York, Boston and Zürich working as a project manager for the asset management of both private individuals and corporations. He had teams of people working under him in both America and Switzerland, and it was usually a person from one of these teams who would come to their penthouse in Greenwich Village on weekday nights to inform Lisa that Mr Rippner would not be able to make it home for dinner because he had to catch a flight to Zürich.

She had to admit, it hadn't been bad at all for the last three years. They were a moderately stereotypical upper-class family up until about two months earlier. Jackson and Lisa roamed the city as socialites, attending operas and museum exhibit openings. Hediyeh, now nearly eleven, was near the top of her class at her all-girls middle school, The Chapin School, and, as she was proud to say to everyone, reading at the college level. Whether she truly, deeply understood what she was reading or not, Lisa wasn't sure, but she was quite good at sounding out words immediately. Jonathan, after passing his terrible twos, had started attending nursery school in the afternoons. According to his teachers, he wasn't the most social of children and more than a bit germophobic, but of all of the kids in his class, he had the most developed vocabulary and best understanding of complex questions. Lisa was concerned about his social skills, but Jackson didn't seem to care as long as Jonathan continued impressing his teachers intellectually.

About three and a half months earlier, Lisa went in for a routine gynaecological exam and came home with the news that they'd be adding another member of the family around Jackson's birthday the next year. A couple more weeks passed and they found out that it would in fact be two new members of the family, dizygotic twins. Right before Jackson's last trip to Switzerland, they received the news that the babies would be a boy and a girl.

His last trip to Switzerland, that's when life had taken a huge dive. When they met him at the airport, he just seemed distant. As they sat in traffic in the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, Jackson completely ignored the kids as they asked questions about what he'd done in Switzerland, if he'd brought any presents home for them, if he'd heard about the great test grade Hediyeh got. Lisa made the excuse for him, telling the kids that Daddy was tired because he'd been very busy. They were kind enough to not mention that Daddy had never been tired before when he got back from Switzerland. The two of them stayed quiet from the opening of the tunnel until they got back to the house, and the three of them were left to fend for themselves that night when Jackson immediately went from the car to their bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

He tried to make up for it the next day, but even the kids knew it was fake. Within a week, Lisa received notes from both of the kids' teachers that they'd been misbehaving in school and Hediyeh had even failed assignments. One day, Jonathan even went so far as to shove another child into the wall at his day care because the other child had sneezed on him. The teachers didn't want him there for the afternoon, Jonathan didn't want to be there _ever_ out of sheer paranoia, and Lisa didn't want Jackson finding out that their son had been punished at school. For four days, she pretended to leave in the morning to take Jonathan to day care only to ride around on the subway for two hours with the boy sitting in her lap, sucking his thumb. Greenwich Village to Harlem to Queens to Brooklyn to Staten Island and back home. Jackson didn't find out and Lisa was able to convince Jonathan to go back to day care as long as he was allowed to wear a raincoat and galoshes whenever it was playtime.

The stomach-rubbing thing started a few days after Jonathan went back to day care. It didn't bother her at first because she thought he was just starting to act affectionate again, but when she finally caught a glance of his face in the reflection on the microwave, she got angry. He wasn't even reacting as he did it, his face as emotionless as her internist's when she went in for a physical. Every time after that, his touch just felt clinical and forced.

Jackson rustled his papers, tapping them on the hard surface of the nightstand before setting them down and clicking off the light. There was the sound of fabric on fabric as he slipped under the covers, scooting over to Lisa and throwing his arm over her waist. His lips pressed against her hair, giving her a light kiss before breezing over to her ear.

'Goodnight, Lisa.'

His tone was so clipped, so mechanical, she could almost feel her heart break. She curled into herself, pressing her face into the pillow, but Jackson didn't seem to perceive that anything at all was wrong. Within a couple of minutes, his breathing grew even, and she let herself cry.

---

_'This isn't the life for you.'_

If Jackson had had any change since marrying Lisa, it was that his dreams had become more colourful. No longer did the dishwasher or grocery list torment his sleep, their white and silver settled in the kitchen. No, now it was Lisa herself. Whilst a husband dreaming about his wife may be perceived as something romantic, it was naturally different for the Rippners. He knew he was dreaming but could feel himself shiver against the cold wind his brain had created for this exact moment. He looked at her face, which was bright red with windburn, tears making little shining lines down her cheeks.

_'You're like an animal in a cage,'_ she murmured over the howl of the wind. A gust brought down more powdery snow. _'You're not a family man.'_

He reached out and grabbed dream Lisa's wrists. 'I _am_ a family man. I love my wife, I love my children, and I can't imagine how it would be without them.'

Dream Lisa shook her head, taking her hands away. _'If you have to try too hard then it's not worth it. It's not natural.'_

'Is this what all of this is about? You think I want to be doing something else besides raising Jonathan, supporting you through this pregnancy, helping Hediyeh with her homework...'

Then, his subconscious began acting.

'You're never home,' said dream Lisa, who had miraculously become not the Lisa from years ago in Chicago but rather looked much like the wife who laid beside him right now, down to the tank top and boxer shorts. 'Give me your coat; I'm freezing.'

He handed her the coat, looking into her eyes. 'Leese, I—'

'You upset the children so badly when you came back from Zürich, Hediyeh has failed tests and Jonathan has acted out. Didn't you hear them crying that night you got home? For the love of God, Jackson, give me a fucking break!'

'I don't even remember getting home from Zürich! I woke up the next morning and was absolutely stunned that I was home.'

'Why don't you just tell me things? We need to get help for you before something horrible happens.'

'I don't need help,' he replied dryly. 'I can handle everything.'

Dream Lisa pinched her lips together with a grunt, and when he looked at her again, it was his meek little Chicago Lisa, dressed to the nines with her maternity suit and cashmere. _'I just want you to think about it, all right?'_

'Think about what?' he asked as he started to hear a snow plough coming around to clear the roads.

It grew loud enough that it almost covered her last words. _'I don't want to be the reason why you're not doing something you love.'_

_**THUNK.**_

When Jackson opened his eyes, he was no longer in bed but rather sprawled out on the hardwood floor, sharp pain radiating from the right side of his head. He tried to sit up, but only received a very bad head rush, and as soon as he thumped back down onto the floor, Lisa shuffled around the bed and bent down to him.

'Jesus, Jackson,' she said, reaching up to turn on the lamp. She pulled his shoulders into her lap, turning his face towards her thigh. Her fingers moved lightly over the side of his head, carefully combing back his hair from the bleeding gash on his scalp. 'Oh, honey...'

She clicked her tongue and he closed his eyes, nuzzling his face into the flesh of her thigh. Her hand slipped under his chin before she stretched up, pulling items off of his nightstand. A moment later, her hand let go of his chin and cupped around the gash before the coolness of water spilled over his scalp. She blotted at the water with his handkerchief, studying the cut carefully.

'It's not too bad,' she said quietly, dabbing at the area. 'Let me go get the first aid kit.'

She started to move, but he reached up and took her elbow. 'Stay.'

Knitting her brow, she settled back down, pressing against the cut with one hand and holding under his chin with the other. He relaxed, breathing slowly, his breath dancing over her thigh. She spoke with a choked voice. 'Doesn't it hurt?'

'No,' he murmured. 'I don't even feel it.'

'How did you fall out of the bed?' she asked, lifting up the handkerchief to see how the blood was flowing. Almost immediately, the blood seeped back to the surface and she pressed back down quickly.

'I didn't go to Zürich.'

Lisa froze, staring down at him. 'Yes you did. You left on a flight to Zürich and came back on a flight from Zürich.'

'I didn't stay there,' he said, nuzzling into her thigh more. 'I took a train to Genève after three days.'

'Genève?' she asked, turning over the word in her head. 'Geneva. Why Geneva?'

'I had to go to a funeral,' he replied, pressing his lips lightly against her thigh several times.

She frowned, looking at him as she placed her hand on his chest. 'Why didn't you tell me? Is that what's made you so far away the last few weeks?'

'She worked for my old boss,' he continued, completely ignoring her questions. 'They found her body on the shore of Lake Geneva near Montreux; she'd been shot point-blank in the forehead.'

Rubbing his hair awkwardly, she swallowed uncomfortably at the detachment apparent in his voice before speaking. 'What was her name?'

'Anaïs, like the author,' he replied. 'I talked to some of the people at the funeral and they said that ballistics showed she was killed by a Makarov.'

'Makarov?'

'An old Soviet handgun,' he said, turning his head to look at her face. 'None of us could think of someone in the Society who uses one though.'

'How do you know someone in your old company killed her?'

He just gave her a look like she'd just said something incredibly stupid before turning his head and pushing himself up into a sitting position. 'You can go get the first aid kit now.'


	3. Morning, 5 August 2009

A/N: Maaaaan, there are some absolutely funky dresses on the Oscars...

---

'You've reached the office of Dr Carol Bellamy. I'm not here to take your call right now. If this is not an emergency, please leave a message. If it is an emergency, please call the main office at—'

With a loud sigh, Lisa snapped her phone shut and leaned her head against the window. The person sitting next to her in the train gave her a sideways glance before looking back down at his magazine. For a few seconds, Lisa let her breath condense on the cold window as she looked out at the imposing barrack-like buildings of West Point crowning the hill sprouting from the ice-filled Hudson River. Her mind wandered hopelessly as the train wound back and forth, following the river up towards Albany.

It was truly an act of helpless defiance. Jackson left for work at 6:30, she took the kids by subway to school by 7:00 and still managed to make it on the 7:15 from Penn Station to Albany. She planned to do her covert business in Troy and then catch the 2:00 from Albany-Rensselaer to Pennsylvania Station so she could be home in time to make dinner before Jackson came home at 6:30. She also had to make sure to remember to put his little black book back into his desk drawer before he noticed it missing.

Lisa jolted out of her thoughts as a hand landed on her upper arm. Terrified, she turned to face the person only to find that the guy next to her was pointing at her cell phone as it did a little dance across the tray table. They'd established early on in the ride that he didn't speak English and she didn't speak Norwegian, so most 'conversation' between the two on the short train ride had been in the form of hand gestures. As she watched the vibrating screen, she gave him the thumbs up before grabbing it.

'Mom?'

'Lisa, is everything all right? I called your Dad and he said he didn't get any call from you and—'

'Mom, this is more of a psychiatric thing than a chatting thing,' she admitted right off the bat. 'I can't convince Jackson to see a therapist.'

'Honey, you can't force someone into therapy,' she said. 'Unless he's hurting you. Is he hurting you? Or the children? Lisa, if he's—'

'Mom!' Lisa said, exasperated. 'He's not hurting anyone, I'm just very worried about him. He's been distant, very forgetful, confused, and we had the weirdest thing happen a couple of nights ago.'

Lisa could hear the scratching sound of her mother taking down notes. 'Tell me about it.'

'Well, we were sleeping, and Jackson started just saying my name over and over again. I woke up, and when I looked over at him, he sat up in bed and purposefully fell over onto his nightstand like he was trying to break open his skull,' she said in a frantic whisper, turning to look out the window and cupping a hand around the speaker of the phone. 'Luckily, he just opened the skin, but the weirdest thing was that he didn't feel any pain from doing it.'

Scribbling answered her on the other end, soon accompanied by a sigh and a shuffling of papers. 'Lisa, I'm going to name some symptoms and would like you to say whether or not you've seen Jackson display them. Do you understand?'

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, watching in her peripheral vision as the Norwegian man got up and started moving to the dining car. 'Okay.'

Carol cleared her throat. 'Lack of emotion sharing.'

'Come on, mom, you know that,' she whined. 'Check.'

'Over-controlling, hyper-irritability, narcissistic rage?'

'All of those, yes.'

'Concrete and ordered thinking?'

'That's why Crédit Suisse hired him in the first place. He's not at all flighty.'

'So check on that one too... rarely reflects on the past?'

'He just doesn't like to talk about it,' she said, trying to think back on the conversations they'd had about things in his past. 'I don't know if he thinks about it or not, but he doesn't vocalise things about his past.'

'All right. Do you know anything about Jackson's early life, Leese?'

'A little,' she replied, one eye awkwardly. 'What do you need to know?'

'Were his parents kind to him?'

Lisa thought about what Jackson had told him about his parents when he was recovering after the attack by Millwood. He killed them, yes, but she wasn't completely certain about all of the details. 'He went to boarding school when he was younger and when he was at home, it was only his mom at home because his dad lived in the city. His dad lost his job and came home, and that's when Jackson said he started abusing him.'

'Do you know what they did to him?'

'Father was an alcoholic, mother just kind of went along with everything even up until...'

And it was at that moment that Lisa remembered they'd never bothered to tell her parents that Jackson had murdered his own at the same time that she was dressing up in her mother's lab coats and diagnosing her stuffed animals with various mental diseases.

'Lisa? Are you still there?'

'Y-Yeah, mom, I'm still here. Sorry, we're in the forest, so the signal fades every now and then.'

'Now what were you saying about his parents?'

A long sigh. 'Mom, you have to promise not to tell Daddy about this, okay?'

'Doctor-patient relationship, honey.'

She looked around for a moment before whispering into the phone. 'They abused him so badly, that one day Jackson just snapped and killed both of his parents in the kitchen with an axe. I found the reports a few years ago in the public archives, and they said that he acted as though nothing of consequence had happened.'

There was uncomfortable audible silence on the other end.

'Don't tell Daddy!' Lisa said simply to break the silence.

'Dear, have you heard of a condition known as alexithymia?'

'No... should I have?'

'Well, I had a few patients back when you were a little girl, but I don't think you ever learned the name,' Carol replied. 'It's not uncommon, but very few people actually know the name of the condition. When I first met Jackson, I felt that he was very alexithymic, but as the years have passed, I've seen the symptoms fade away. Now it seems as though they've flooded back. How long has it been like this?'

'Just a couple of weeks.'

Carol clicked her tongue in a way that made Lisa realise she was slowly becoming her mother. 'You mentioned that he's sometimes forgetful or confused. I'm going to list off events and I'd like you to tell me if Jackson has experienced them in the last two weeks.'

'Okay,' she said, laying her head back on the headrest.

'Finding himself listening to someone talking only to suddenly realise he had no idea what the person said.'

'Yes, but I do that too. There are a lot of boring people up here.'

Papers shuffling yet again. 'He has the experience of finding himself in a place and having no idea how he got there.'

Lisa felt a little knot in her chest. After returning from Zürich, Jackson claimed to have not remembered arriving home. 'Check.'

'He finds himself dressed in clothes that he didn't remember putting on.'

Her hand slid down to sit right above her navel. 'A couple of days this week, he's started his "getting dressed" cycle twice only to catch himself in the mirror and then leave the house as though nothing happened.'

'He finds that he is sometimes able to ignore pain.'

'Mom,' Lisa said. 'What are these the symptoms for?'

'A condition called dissociative identity disorder, what we used to call multiple personality disorder. It's been linked to alexithymia by many research projects led by professors,' Carol said, taking more notes as Lisa knit her brow. 'Lisa, I'm very worried about how quickly these symptoms are coming to him. Where is Jackson?'

'At work,' she replied quickly. 'I saw him off this morning.'

'And where are you? Obviously not at home.'

'I'm going up to Albany.'

'Heavens, what for?'

She looked at the cover of Jackson's address book that was sitting so neatly on the tray table. 'I need to ask a friend of Jackson's some questions.'

'You need to get back to New York as soon as possible to institutionalise your husband, honey. I can take care of referral, talk to some colleagues in the area,' she said authoritatively. 'Dissociative identity disorder is not something to take lightly, especially not when it's been brought on so suddenly. Do you know any new stresses that could have caused this mental relapse?'

'Something happened last time he went to Switzerland, but I can't coax many details out of him.'

'Don't force him too hard,' Carol said in her Dr Bellamy voice. 'With alexithymics, it's better to ignore things that have happened in the past and just focus on the future, teaching them how to better express themselves rather than staying bottled up.'

Lisa hated the Dr Bellamy voice—she always got the same tone when her stuffed animals attempted suicide and had to be checked into her dollhouse mental hospital, or when she came home late during high school. 'I'll be home tonight and will bring this up with him.'

'No, honey, you need to make sure that he actually gets checked in somewhere. This is a very dangerous condition!' Carol said in a near panic. 'You need to call his office, call the hospital, get him taken care of!'

'Mom, I have facts now and names of conditions. As long as I have concrete evidence, he usually just goes along with what I'm telling him. I'll take care of this, don't worry,' she said, suddenly longing for the end of the phone call. 'I'll finish my things in Albany and be back in the City before it even gets dark. He'll never notice I'm gone, and he won't do anything when he's at work.'

Lisa could tell her mother wanted to say more, but after a long break, there was a sigh. 'Just keep me updated.'

'I will. Love you, Mom. Thanks for your help.'

'Love you too, Lisa.'


	4. Afternoon, 5 August 2009

A/N: I was awake for almost 21 hours straight yesterday, and thirteen of those hours were spent at work. Insanity!

---

It was only when she was in the wind that Lisa wished she cut her hair shorter. Since coming back from Syria, she'd just let it grow, and now it was down to her mid-back. The cold winds coming off of the Hudson River kept pummelling her and whipping at her face with her own hair, so she was more than excited when a cab pulled up. Jumping inside, she opened the little book in her lap and flipped a few pages.

'10 Terrace in Troy.'

The cabbie nodded before pressing the clear button on his meter. They drove down poorly maintained streets before merging onto the 787 and speeding past the little mill houses on the other bank of the Hudson. Lisa stared at the Pepsi Dome and the odd federal buildings, remembering back to the first time she'd seen them with Jackson. He hated the skyline and made her close the curtains, but now she was able to stare at it as much as she wished. For the size of the town, it seemed to have far too much infrastructure. Highways spun big cloverleaves above them, and they even climbed over where, many times, there was no under. It was a mess of a place, poorly planned, she decided, and began to wonder if Jackson's hate of Albany had nothing to do with his childhood but rather with his obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

They exited the expressway and got onto the 378, crossing over the river in plain view of the Polytechnic Institute. Once they disappeared between buildings again, Lisa found herself lost and paid more attention to the back of the seat in front of her than the houses and woods going by on both sides. They passed a pond and a cemetery before the driver took two sharp left turns. The driver stayed on Pawling and they passed three cross-streets on the left before turning onto Terrace. He stopped immediately after turning onto the street and she looked up at him.

'10 Terrace,' he said, gesturing to the white two-storey house on their left.

'Thank you,' Lisa said, handing the man a pile of bills. 'Just give me back a five.'

She slipped out of the taxi, and after rearranging her money and smoothing out her coat, Lisa looked up at the boxy white house. Taking in the bareness of the trees in the yard, the general disregard for anything vaguely resembling landscaping, and breathing in the cold air to calm herself, she slowly walked up the fragmented driveway, her feet mashing in the fall's discarded, wet leaves. At the bottom of the stairs, she put her hand on the peeling rail and stared at the closed door. Before she was able to take another step up, however, the door opened and a red-haired woman stepped out onto the porch, her arms crossed as she looked down at Lisa. The door slammed shut.

'Jackson's not with you.'

Lisa wasn't sure if it was a comment or a question, so she didn't answer. 'I need some information from you.'

'For what purpose?' asked the woman, tipping up her chin.

Without taking her eyes off the woman, Lisa grabbed around in her purse for Jackson's book. Finding it, she held it by the top edge and nervously flipped through it until she found the page that had first piqued her interest at home. Taking a couple of steps up, she held the book in front of the woman's face. 'You're Melissa Bayley, right?'

Melissa stared at her for a moment before reaching out and taking the book by the lower edge. 'What are you wanting, Mrs Rippner?'

'Jackson has you listed as his family,' Lisa said, crossing her arms against the wind.

'We've known each other for a long time,' Melissa replied, tight-lipped. 'I doubt this visit is just to ask about the information in Jackson's little black book.'

They stood a couple of feet from each other, Lisa expecting for Melissa to invite her in, but Melissa didn't move an inch. 'I was wondering if you know anything about his psychological background.'

After looking down at the book for a moment, she closed it before turning around, pushing open the door and stepping in. 'Come in.'

Awkwardly, Lisa finished climbing the stairs and stepped in behind Melissa. She closed the door and was about to step forward when Melissa spoke again.

'Leave your shoes and coat at the door.'

Lisa stopped, pushing off her slippers and bending to the side to pick them up and place them in a shoe cubby on the wall. She put them beside a pair of dirty boys' Vans that looked about twice the size of Jonathan's shoes before walking over and hanging her coat from a hook on the end of the cubby. Pulling down the left side of her sweater, which had been disturbed when she took her coat off, she followed after Melissa and found her in the den handing a cup of tea to a young boy wrapped in a blanket on the couch. She was talking to him, but when Lisa entered, she stopped, looked at Lisa and then back at the boy.

'If you need anything, just call me. I'll be in the kitchen with Mrs Rippner.'

The boy turned around, looking at Lisa in the doorway before looking back at the TV. Melissa walked across the room and Lisa followed her into the kitchen, stepping past her so that Melissa could close the door into the room. Melissa gestured to the table.

'Please sit down,' she said before walking to the stove, pulling a teapot from the burner as Lisa walked to the table. 'I'd offer you some tea, but I see it wasn't just your coat making you look... _bulky_.'

Leaning against the heel of her hand, Lisa gave a dirty look to Melissa before looking back out the window. In the glass, she could see Melissa filling teacups and giving her covert looks, but neither allowed the other to make eye contact with her reflection. After a minute or so, Melissa stepped out from behind the counter and walked over, setting a cup of hot water in front of Lisa that had a saucer with sliced lemons on top. Melissa sat down across from her, immediately picking up her own cup and taking a long sip.

'Are you due soon?' Melissa asked, pointing to Lisa's stomach with her pinky.

Lisa pressed her hand against her stomach with a smile. 'Don't I wish. We're only at sixteen weeks.'

Melissa raised her eyebrows, coughing a bit in her tea. 'Oh _no_, twins?'

As she squeezed the lemon into her hot water, Lisa nodded then took a sip before speaking. 'A boy and a girl.'

Melissa nodded, turning her attention back to her tea. They both grew quiet, the background noises of Melissa's son's TV shows mingling with the slow tapping of a leaky faucet in the kitchen. Lisa rubbed the rim of her teacup before picking it up and taking a sip, looking through the steam at the other woman, who seemed preoccupied with her thoughts.

'Are you asking about Jacks' mental history because of the kids?'

'No, we already know how Jonathan is—' Lisa answered, pausing before finishing the thought and changing topics. 'Jackson's had some... _worrying_ behaviour lately.'

Leaning against the table, Melissa pressed the upper joint of her thumb to her lips. 'I'm going to ask you something, and I don't want you to get upset about it. This worrying behaviour, did it start about three, four weeks ago?'

Lisa looked up darkly from her teacup but didn't answer Melissa. The woman reclined in her chair, tipping her head forward to level eyes with Lisa.

'You know about Anaïs then.'

'He said something about her a couple of nights ago after he cracked his head on the night stand,' Lisa replied as she tapped at the wood of the table. 'I don't know who she is though except that he said she worked for his old boss.'

'Anaïs basically _was _the boss,' Melissa said to her, her eyes wide. 'She ran everything, scheduled all appointments, and I never saw the patron without her by his side, but he didn't come to her funeral.'

'Were you at the funeral?'

'My son has mono,' she said, shaking her head. 'I've been at home with him all month.'

Lisa licked her lips before biting at her tongue softly, her eyes focused on the windowsill. 'Jackson told me that there was a gun that was used to kill her, a Mak—'

'Makarov,' Melissa finished. 'It's the personal arm the patron carries, and I'm sure that's just eating at Jackson.'

She knitted her brows. 'He told me he didn't know of anyone who used that kind of gun.'

'Then he's lying to you,' said Melissa smoothly before finishing her tea. 'Trust me though, I bet he doesn't even realise he's lying.'

'What do you mean?'

Melissa looked like she was choosing her words very carefully. 'I... I had access to Jackson's medical files because I was assigned to watch him. A few years ago, the kids and I moved from across town and I was going through a bunch of boxes in my office and happened to find the files.'

She got silent again for about half a minute, closing her eyes in thought.

'I don't know how much Jackson told you about the day his parents died,' Melissa said, laying her palms on the table. 'Because he was so young, a lot of the information from the case didn't make it into the papers, but it did make it into his medical file at Rockland, the children's home he was sent to in Orangeburg. When the investigators found him, he had no recollection of anything that happened and didn't even recognise pictures of his parents when they were presented to him. He didn't even recognise himself in pictures until he was given a mirror to look at. Oh, and according to the police report, they had to bring in an interpreter because he couldn't remember how to speak English.'

By this point, Lisa's hands were folded in her lap as she stared openly at Melissa. 'Why would he forget how to speak English?'

'Because it's not his first language,' she replied in a patronising tone, raising an eyebrow. 'Haven't you ever noticed that sometimes he speaks with an accent, or muddles up his grammar, or forgets the words for things? His parents sent him to Francophone boarding school when he was really young and he didn't learn English until he was I think seven or eight. When he was sent to public school, everyone thought he was mentally retarded because he didn't understand questions posed to him, then they thought he was an idiot savant because he had such good maths grades. His parents never answered calls from his teachers, so they just placed him in special ed until someone noticed he took all his maths notes in French.'

'I had no idea,' she murmured. 'All of this was in his medical records?'

'His first psychiatrist did a case report,' Melissa said with a shrug before continuing. 'Anyway, he'd been living alone in the house for a few days, apparently didn't change his routine or anything, even used the kitchen where his parents' bodies were. He'd even bundled himself up in his parka so that he could turn off the heat to slow down decomposition, and they know it was him because he kept stepping in the blood and leaving little tracks from room to room. But like I said, he didn't remember any of it. It was like there was a gap for three days where he was in a walking coma. His only memories of that day are the ones planted in his head by Dr Greene.'

'So are you saying he didn't kill his parents?'

Melissa laughed so suddenly and loudly that Lisa jumped back a bit.

'Oh God no, God no, he _definitely_ killed his parents. In fact, Michael was found over there,' she said, pointing behind her to the side door, then turning to point at the sink. 'And if you move the rug by the sink there, you can actually still see Alice's blood.'

Lisa's throat constricted. 'This is the house?'

'Yeah, but if you took him to five houses in this area, he'd think he lived in every single one of them,' Melissa said flippantly, standing up to walk over and pour herself some more tea. 'We've gone off topic, haven't we?'

Again, the mingling of the television and the dripping faucet. Lisa didn't want to move in her chair, terrified that the angry spirits of her in-laws would decide to sic her right then.

'Anaïs, that's right,' Melissa said after taking a sip of her tea. She walked back to the table, sitting down with her elbow propped on the tabletop. 'I'd say that Jackson's panicked because he knows who killed her, but he won't tell anyone. Realise that this is all second hand, but after the funeral, he supposedly had a panic attack and was taken to the ER by Lyna. You know Lyna, yeah?'

'Yeah,' said Lisa distastefully.

'Well, on the way there, he said that Anaïs called him the night before she died.'

'When he was in Zürich?'

'No,' Melissa said, shaking her head vehemently. 'Anaïs died when he was still in New York. He knew when he left the City that he was going to Geneva once he got off that plane.'

'When?' Lisa asked, leaning forward so that her stomach was touching the table. 'When did she call him?'

'Well, she was found on the 20th of September, but had been missing for a few days, so probably about the 16th or 17th.'

'The seventeenth,' muttered Lisa. 'That's the day our nanny quit.'

'Your _nanny_?' Melissa said with a laugh. 'How typical of Jackson Rippner to have a nan—'

'I asked for one,' Lisa interrupted. 'After I got pregnant, I thought it would be easier to have an extra set of hands to help with the kids because Jackson's out of town so much. A young girl, nineteen or twenty, going to NYU and working part-time as an LPN. She worked for us for two months, but right before Jackson left for Zürich this last time, she quit. Something Jackson said upset her, she said, but didn't really elaborate.'

'Too much information,' Melissa said, holding up a hand. 'We need to speak to this girl. Do you know where she lives?'

'Yeah, a couple of streets over. Why?'

'She might have heard what Anaïs was saying to Jackson that got him so upset as to cause this relapse,' Melissa said, taking both of their cups and throwing them in the sink quite unceremoniously. 'What train are your tickets for?'

'The two o'clock.'

'Well, we can change them. If we take the ten o'clock, that'll give me enough time to find someone to take the kids for a few days,' she said, already scanning a list of numbers by the phone.

As Melissa scrambled around, Lisa reached across the table for the black book, only to notice a calling card float from it and land on the floor. She closed the book and put it in her purse before squatting down and taking the card between her fingers. It was a very simple piece of paper, lightly embossed with dark raised writing in the centre. There was just a person's name in stronger font with a light line under giving the person's position, she assumed. She looked up at the back of Melissa's head as the other woman bargained with another mother about keeping her daughter for the next couple of days.

Turning it over in her fingers, she looked very closely at it. 'Eleni Petalas... _conseilleuse de direction du directeur de la Société mondiale._'

'What did you just say?' asked Melissa, hanging up the phone after a successful call.

'Eleni Petalas,' she said looking up at Melissa, whose eyes implored her to continue. _'Conseilleuse de direction du directeur de la Société mondiale_.'

Melissa froze before taking several long strides to Lisa and plucking the card from her hands. She stared at it, turning it over in her hands. 'Where was this?'

'In his address book,' Lisa said, beginning to reach into her purse, but Melissa stopped her, grabbing her wrist.

'I need to talk to Jackson right now,' Melissa said, shaking Lisa's arm up and down. 'I need to know where he got this.'


	5. Late Afternoon, 5 August 2009

A/N: My favourite patient slipped into a coma today ..

---

Considering the extended cold and cloudy weather, it was absolutely no surprise that the number of people checking into the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital Centre had increased exponentially over the last few days. With nasty weather came seasonal affective disorder, Munchausen season affective disorder, spikes in depressive moments for bipolar patients and oh so much more. Nurses who were normally off-duty were brought in with the lure of overtime pay, some working for illegally long as patients just kept coming and coming. Every slightly dark place was being used by someone, whether it be a doctor sleeping on the bench in the locker room with the lights turned off or a nurse snoozing in an empty bed following a particularly hairy emergency case. As licensed practical nurse Augustine Brookstone sat at her terminal in the nurses' station during her eighteenth straight hour on duty, she even had her feet resting on the side of an intern's waist as the woman napped under the desk. Taking a sip from the nearly empty Red Bull she kept stashed behind some notes taped from the counter, she blinked her dry brown eyes and tried to bring the computer screen into focus again.

'Brookstone,' said an authoritative voice in front of her, and she jumped before looking up.

'Hm?' she murmured, trying to keep her attention on the attending in front of her rather than the fact that the area behind him seemed to be dancing.

'You were supposed to leave a few hours ago,' he said, tapping the clipboard in his hand on the edge of the counter. 'Things are starting to slow down, so go home and get some rest.'

'Yes sir,' she said calmly, trying not to seem too excited about finally getting out. As he walked away, she tried to slowly take up time by untying her hair and running her fingers through the now quite tangled length before taking the little brown elastic that matched the shade of her hair so nicely and making a loose loop right over the nape of her neck.

Once the attending was out of sight, she started gathering her things frantically, putting a hoodie over her scrubs and taking her purse from the drawer next to her leg, throwing it across her shoulders. As she snapped the drawer shut, the intern jumped up suddenly, slamming her head on the desk and cursing before crawling out, rubbing her head as she stood. She gave Augustine a blurry look before straightening her scrubs shirt and wandering off, but Augustine didn't watch which direction she went. There was one rule she'd learned since she started at the hospital a month and a half earlier: if you were given a window, escape immediately.

Opening the counter door, she slipped out and stared straight ahead to the exit. She kept her arms straight to the sides, her feet making a quick tap-tapping noise as she made a very slow run for her life. Her heart raced as she reached out to push the button to open the ward door, only to have the almost expected happen.

'Nurse Brookstone!' came a voice from behind her. 'Nurse Brookstone, wait!'

She froze and slumped her shoulders with a theatrical sigh before turning around and rolling her eyes. 'Whaaa-aat?'

A CNA ran up to her, his arms loaded with pre-packaged supplies. 'Dr Masterson said that you were leaving. Can you run these down to the PICU on your way out?'

She blinked slowly, the information turning over in her head. 'We're _in _the PICU.'

'The other PICU,' he said carefully. '_Paediatric_ Intensive Care Unit.'

A long silence passed between the two of them before she reached out and took the armful of supplies. He opened the door for her, watching as she ambled away, stopping after a dozen or so feet to take a turn towards the elevators.

'Um... have a nice night!' he said before the door clicked shut.

'Fucking uppity aides,' she grumbled as she jutted out her hip to push the elevator call button. Several seconds passed before a _ding_ echoed in the tiled hallway and the metal doors purred open.

The slow drop of the elevator didn't help her sleepiness too much, and before she'd made it down the eight floors to the _other_ PICU, as the CNA had put it, she had her face pressed against the cool metal of the walls and her eyes half closed. When the doors slipped open again, she groaned as she pushed herself away from the wall and shuffled forward, her white Danskos making squeaking noises on the disinfected floor. As she walked to the paediatric unit, a couple of nurses moved past her without even recognising her existence. Reaching the ward doors, she kicked the door button and watched the doors open in before stumbling over to the nurses' station. Rather than asking what she was doing or even stopping their conversation to look at her, the two nurses behind the counter just kept chatting about some big sale Century 21 was having in the coming weekend. Narrowing her eyes, Augustine leaned forward and just dumped all of the supplies on top of the keyboard of the computer in front of one of the women. When they finally turned to look at her, she wiped her hands against each other before putting them on her hips.

'Deal with these yourself,' she snapped, quickly turning on her heel to go back the same direction with the nurse gaping after her.

'What are these for?' the woman yelled after her.

Augustine turned on her heel, giving an exhausted look to the other woman. 'Listen, one of my CNAs just sent me down here with those. I don't know who put the request in or whatever, but you guys can just work it out for yourselves. I'm going home.'

The woman kept yelling after her, but Augustine just ignored her. Taking the long walk across to the other side of the hospital so she wouldn't have to walk the extra distance outside, Augustine just let herself go into a daze, so it was utterly jarring when she found herself no longer walking peacefully down the hall but rather being shoved into a supply closet with what felt suspiciously like a scalpel being held against the side of her neck.

As the door closed, leaving her in the darkness with her assailant, she found herself quite awake and quite surprised that she didn't just urinate all over herself.

'Please do not move.'

'I didn't plan to,' she muttered back to the person.

She felt the breath of the person teasing her ear and closed her eyes, willing herself to remain as calm as possible. Outside of the door, she couldn't hear a single person walking by or even the sounds of machinery, but she became stunningly aware of the smell of clove cigarettes on the breath of the woman behind her.

'You are going to be asked what you heard discussed in the phone call between Jackson Rippner and Anaïs Vioget,' she said slowly into Augustine's ear. 'You won't say a single thing. Understood?'

Her mouth got very dry. 'Understood.'

'I would recommend you go home right now, pack your things and leave the city as soon as possible,' she said maliciously, pressing the long edge of the scalpel harder into Augustine's throat.

She held her breath, afraid that if her neck moved or expanded, the scalpel would cut into her. 'Leave the city, got it.'

'Now you're going to leave this room as though nothing at all happened,' the woman said, nuzzling her nose into Augustine's hair to get closer to her ear. 'And don't dare interfere in this, do you understand me?'

The scalpel lifted off a bit and Augustine nodded, licking her lips.

'Good girl,' she said before shoving Augustine toward the door.

Augustine felt around in the dark for the door handle, clutching at it with shaking hands before managing to turn it and fall into the hallway. She walked robotically, keeping her arms straight to the sides as she moved as quickly as possible toward the exit—she knew exactly what she had to do in this situation. Her heart nearly stopped as she heard the door open again, and in the reflection of the window, she could see a blur of blonde hair before she picked up speed and ducked into the elevator hallway, pressing the button frantically until a car appeared and she dove in, pressing herself against the cold wall as she pressed the lobby button. She glanced quickly at her watch, willing the elevator to go faster. When the door began to roll open, she immediately squeezed herself through the narrow opening and diving through the packed lobby, nearly knocking down several people.

When she made it outside, she had picked up so much momentum that as she tried to turn to run towards the subway station, her feet slipped on the wet pavement and she slammed down on her hip. A couple of people moved to help her, but she got back on her feet and ran off without a second thought. She dodged through traffic, ignoring the honks of angry drivers and the complaints of slammed into pedestrians. Slightly in the distance, she could see the stainless steel railing surrounding the steps down to the subway station and the glowing blue 'M' atop the pole behind it.

As she entered the station and swiped her MetroCard, she could feel the huff of a train coming in. Breaking into a run once more, she went down the stairs to the platform and shoved her hand into the door of the train just before it closed. It bounced back and she fell in, slumping into a hard, plasticy seat as the train started off. She closed her eyes, breathing heavily as she tried to straighten her thoughts.

'Dammit,' she groaned, feeling an intense failure pressing down on her shoulders.

She didn't look up as the train slowed, apparently coming across an awkward area in the tracks. The car grew quiet until there was the rolling noise of one of the doors between cars opening, but she didn't even bother to open her eyes. There was the tapping of someone walking, then the sound of a bag landing on one of the hard seats.

'Augustine?'

She opened her eyes to look across the train at a gangly girl in a white blouse and pleated sea-foam skirt with a backpack in the seat next to her.

'Are you running late for something?' she asked, curling the ends of her long, black hair in her fingertips.

'Hedi, thank _God_,' Augustine said, still out of breath, but she felt as though a huge weight had been pulled off of her chest. 'Where is your father?'

'I dunno,' she said with a little shrug. 'Probably at work.'

'Is he all right?'

'I guess,' she muttered.

They sat in silence as the train stopped at 23rd Avenue and the only other person in their car alighted. When the train started again, Hediyeh reached over to zip up her backpack before looking across at Augustine, who was looking beyond her to the blue lights they passed every few seconds.

'Mom left this morning,' Hediyeh admitted, and Augustine focused on her. 'She thinks I don't know, but after she took me to school, I followed her instead of staying there.'

'What do you mean she left?' Augustine asked as the train stopped at 6th Avenue and 14th Street.

Hediyeh stood up and walked to the door, pulling on her backpack as she did. Augustine followed behind her as she got off the train, climbing the stairs up a level before crossing through a group of tourists looking at a map of the system. They walked past a man playing the saxophone to an old recording of Mack the Knife before turning and starting down the stairs to the bottom level of the station. The girl took each step carefully, her Mary Janes avoiding every discolouration and smashed piece of gum on the concrete. The deep platform was nearly empty, the only sound the whooshing of trains coming and going on the levels above them. As they stood waiting for the train to come, Hediyeh took Augustine's hand.

'She went to Penn Station, and she had Dad's address book,' Hediyeh finally replied. 'She took the train up to Albany.'

There was another long silence before the train came up to the platform, the doors slipping open as the speakers announced which direction the train was headed. Hediyeh sat down, pulling Augustine's hand down so that she would sit next to her.

'Do you think Mom's coming back?' she asked in a tiny voice, looking up at Augustine. 'I don't want to live alone with Dad. He scares me.'

'He scares me too,' Augustine admitted, pressing her head back against the window.

'He's been different since he came back from Switzerland. Do you know about that?'

Although she had no intentions of telling her, Augustine knew very well about what had happened in Switzerland. 'No.'

'Liar,' Hediyeh said with a smile. 'You are so bad at lying. I know _tu parles français_. Dad got that phone call, he freaked out, you freaked out, he freaked out at you, he left, you left, then he came back and I heard him and Mom talking the other night about that woman in the phone call, Anaïs.'

'How do you know that name?'

'I think everyone on the street heard that name when he was on the phone,' replied Hediyeh, looking down at the watch on her wrist. 'Hey, why were you in such a hurry?'

'I needed to catch you,' she said. 'You're always on this train.'

'Why did you need to catch me? Is something wrong?' she asked, scooting forward in the chair, her eyes wide.

She wanted to lie to her so badly, but something inside her told her to just give her the truth straight up. Like she'd always been told, you don't have to sign up for the Society, you're born into it, and Hediyeh had the right to know the truth rather than have it sugar coated for her. 'Something is about to go _very_ wrong.'

'How do you know?' the girl asked, her voice cracking as her face scrunched. 'Am I going to lose my parents again?'

'I don't know, Hedi,' Augustine admitted, putting her hand on the girl's back. 'I need to talk to your mom first. Do you know when she'll be home?'

'She bought a ticket for the two o'clock return from Albany, so the train gets in at four twenty-five,' she said then looked down at her watch again. 'It's three o'clock now.'

'Shit,' she murmured, quickly dropping into thought and staying there until the speakers announced the end of the line.

'Come on,' Hediyeh said, walking away from her.

Augustine stepped out of the train but didn't move any farther, looking around oddly.

'What is it?' asked the younger girl, clutching the straps of her backpack until her knuckles turned white.

The train moved away and the station grew silent except for the shrill ringing of a cell phone playing a Bach piece. She looked around before leaning over the edge and seeing a tiny electronic glint lost in the dirtiness of the tracks. Narrowing her eyes, she set down her bag.

'What are you doing?' Hediyeh asked, making a surprised noise as Augustine jumped into the track pit. 'Oh! Be _careful_! The tracks are _electrified_!'

The ringing stopped a moment before Augustine freed the telephone from the grease and refuse it had been trapped under. She turned it over in her hands before tossing it up to Hediyeh, who was looking over the side of the pit at her. Augustine made a running jump at the wall, grabbing onto the tile lightly and slipping before Hediyeh grabbed her shoulders and fell backwards, yanking the nurse up as she went down. Hediyeh grumbled, pulling herself out from under Augustine and brushing herself off before bending down to pick up the phone. Augustine stood, looking down at Hediyeh study the item.

'_A cell phone_?' Hediyeh said, taken aback. She held it forward in her hand, stretching up on her tiptoes to get it right in Augustine's face. 'You jumped in there for—'

'—your father's cell phone,' Augustine finished softly.

Hediyeh's eyes grew wide. Slowly and almost unwillingly, she flipped open the phone and looked at the screen of the electronic in her hand. Smiling back at her was her adoptive mother standing at the stove making dinner as Jonathan sat on the counter 'helping' and Hediyeh stood next to her looking devious with a spoon. Closing it softly, she sniffled and looked up at Augustine with tears in her eyes.

'Why was Daddy's cell phone down there?'

Augustine just shook her head. 'Come on, we need to get your brother and get to your house—it's safe there. My number one priority right now is you two, then we can worry about everything once all the troops arrive.'

Taking Hediyeh's hand once more, Augustine walked to the turnstiles and through to the cold, tile-covered exit. When they walked close enough to feel the icy air blowing down the stairs, Hediyeh paused and set her bag down on the ground, unzipping it and pulling out a coat and knit hat. She carefully slipped on the hat as Augustine bent down and buttoned the oversized buttons of her pea coat. As Hediyeh adjusted her coat, Augustine put the girl's Hello Kitty bag over one of her shoulders and took her hand, pulling her up the stairs to the road above. Water sloshed all around, splashed by the cars passing them on the street and pouring from the scaffolding that seemed to cover the sidewalks of half of the city. For a few moments, they stood under some scaffolding until the crossing sign came on and they went sprinting across and over to Horatio Street. Hidden a few doors down was Jonathan's private day care centre, a place that Augustine had become quite familiar with during her weeks with the Rippner family.

When they finally made it up to the façade of the building, Augustine pressed Hediyeh against her legs and leaned over her to block some of the cold from the shivering girl. She rang the doorbell for the place, relaxing when a woman appeared to let them in.

'Yes, hi, we're here to pick up Jonathan Rippner,' Augustine said strongly as the door closed behind them.

Although they looked shabby, her scrubs gave her street cred with basically everyone. Whenever she did something stupid, she had the excuse sitting on her body. If she wanted something, she could get it because she was a nurse. She could always—

'I need ID and a note from his parents.'

Dammit.

'Augustine is our nanny, Miss Barnes,' snapped back Hediyeh. 'There's an emergency today. Daddy's been sent up to Boston, Mama had to go to Albany, and Augustine was kind enough to go straight from a full schedule at Bellevue with all the crazies to come pick us up and take us home so that she can help us understand why Mama went away this morning and—'

By this point, Hediyeh was sobbing, her face completely covered by her hands. The woman, uncomfortable, disappeared only to come back with Jonathan, who had decided to wear a mackintosh with big alligator buttons down the from and oversized yellow galoshes. Even though she didn't have much time with them, she knew exactly what to do.

'Here are some gloves, baby,' she said, pulling latex gloves out of her purse and handing them to him. 'Watch your step—it's very slippery.'

'Shoes!' Jonathan said, walking toward the door and jumping up and down. 'Hediyeh, look, _rain_!'

'Uh-huh, lots of rain,' she said, sniffling as she walked over to stand with her brother at the glass doors.

'Could you please sign this?'

Augustine looked back at the woman, taking the clipboard and looking at the boxes at the top before scanning down and writing in all of the information. As she signed the box, she could hear Jonathan stomping as he looked out at the streets.

'I want go _home_!' he said, slapping his glove-covered hands on the glass door.

'I want _to_ go home,' Hediyeh muttered to him as Augustine handed the clipboard back to the receptionist. 'This is known as a preposition.'

Augustine laughed uncomfortably at the receptionist before turning around and walking to the kids, pressing a hand to Hediyeh's upper back as she bent sideways and pulled Jonathan's raincoat hood over his head. As she pushed open the door, he ambled out to the sidewalk and tipped his head back, catching raindrops on his face. As Augustine and his sister walked around him on each side, he took their hands and they walked over the next block to Jane Street.

---

'_Mo-om_!' yelled Hediyeh, stepping out of the elevator.

There was soft conversation coming from the direction of Jackson's office, but almost immediately, it stopped. After a few seconds, there was a light click and the door cracked open. Hediyeh took a couple of steps toward the door, and upon seeing who had stepped out, started sobbing and ran as fast as she could to the end of the hallway.

'Daddy!' she screamed, running into him and putting her arms around his waist. 'Daddy, I was so scared!'

'Why?' he asked flatly, staying still as she grabbed him harder.

'Did you find her?' came a voice from the top of the stairs and Jackson looked up quickly before prying his daughter off of him.

'Jackson!' Lisa said from the office, getting up from the couch but not making it through the door before her husband had woven his hand through the steps and grabbed onto Augustine's shoe.

Feeling the jolt, she stepped out of her shoe and stumbled down the stairs, landing square on her butt. She didn't have much time to recover from the fall however as Jackson descended on her and grabbed her by the front of her scrubs, yanking her from the floor and shoving her against the wall of the living room before she even had time to think.

'_I told you not to come back here_!' he hissed, shaking her, his pupils dilated.

'Stop it!' Hediyeh said, coming around to yank at Jackson's coat. 'Daddy, she's here to help!'

'I don't need help, especially not from _her_!' he hissed as he looked down at her angrily, using one hand to pull Hediyeh off once again. She fell to the floor and sat looking up at him with tears in her eyes.

'Daddy…' she said, her voice cracking, but he didn't pay the least bit of attention to her until equally strong hands grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him away from Augustine.

In just a few moments, the woman slapped him across the face twice and dragged him across the room, shoving him into a chair near the window.

'For the _love_ of _God_, Jacks!' Melissa said, her tone very much on edge. 'Can't you see what we're worried about now? Do you think this is normal?'

He looked across the room at the others. Lisa was helping Augustine up as Hediyeh clung to her arm, her face buried in Lisa's dress. His wife was avoiding eye contact with him as she bent down and picked up Hediyeh with a grunt, trying to put the gangly girl up on her hip comfortably. When it seemed impossible for Hediyeh to put her legs around her mother, Augustine took the girl from her mother's arms and they both started up the stairs silently. Jackson looked back at Melissa, who was seething with her hands on her hips.

'They seemed to take it just fine,' he said in a very measured tone.

She pulled her hand back to slap him again, but before she was able to touch his face, his hand shot out and grabbed hers, quickly bending it back until she heard a sharp snap and pain shot up her arm. Gasping, she tried to take her hand back from Jackson, but he just kept looking at her with a blank-eyed stare.

'There is nothing wrong with me and nothing wrong with my family,' he said very quietly. 'They mean more to me than anything ever has, and I will not let anyone interfere in our lives.'

'Jackson... you have to—'

With a sigh, his face relaxed, only to contort into an angry grimace once more as he twisted her wrist until she screamed. Filled with adrenaline, Melissa kicked him hard enough that he let go, grabbing his stomach as she stumbled backwards.

'There is something _wrong_ with you!' she said, curling her arm to her waist. 'You've had one of the episodes before, Jackson, you can't have another one, not right now.'

He stood up, walking slowly toward her as she backed up. There was something different in the way he walked, the way his face was set, and it terrified her to the core. Swallowing, she started backing up the stairs, but once she reached the third stair, he grabbed out for her and took the front of her sweater, pulling her down to him.

'Jackson,' she murmured, her voice shaky.

He looked her straight in the eyes, his jaw set. She was about to speak again when his hands moved up to her shoulders and in only a second, his forehead cracked against her own. As Melissa went limp and fell against him, her chin slipping down to rest on his shoulder, he pulled her from the stairs and dropped her unceremoniously onto the floor. Her head thumped against the hardwood, and upstairs in Hediyeh's room, Augustine looked out the door before standing up and walking onto the landing. She looked down, seeing Melissa lying prone on the floor and Jackson's face glaring up at her before he disappeared from sight.

Without a second thought, she started down the landing and turned sharply to thump down the stairs, grumbling as the elevator doors slipped shut before she could reach them. Turning once more, she went to the emergency stairs, her feet already sounding far away by the time the door closed. In less than a minute, she burst out of the lobby level emergency exit and sprinted across the entrance, slamming into the door before realising it had to open in. She yanked at it, looking both directions before seeing Jackson walking towards Horatio. Picking up her speed again, she ran after him, feeling a very strong sense of déjà vu as she passed Jonathan's day care. She chased him down Horatio, almost grabbing his suit jacket before slipping and catching her foot in a storm-flooded grate. Grunting, she tried to pull her foot out, but once she saw him disappear around the corner onto 14th, she knew it was too late. Cursing her luck, she laid back on the concrete, letting the rain just splash all over her face as she tried to ignore the burning pain in her ankle.


	6. Early Evening, 5 August 2009

A/N: Mrgh, my patient died on Wednesday.

---

'Where is he?' asked a panicked Lisa as a very soaked Augustine stepped back into the house, hissing in pain as she put weight on her ankle, which she'd wrapped in a ripped piece of her scrubs.

Without answering, she hobbled over to the living room, falling back into a chair before looking over at Melissa, who was blinking slowly as she lay back on the couch. Her arm was just resting on her chest, and considering how tender it looked and the bruising around her forearm, Augustine could only assume that Jackson had managed to injure one of the bones in Melissa's arm.

'Augustine,' Lisa muttered, walking over quietly to get on her knees in front of the nurse. 'Where is my husband?'

'He got away,' she said simply in a tiny voice. 'I almost caught him, but... I slipped.'

Lisa sank completely to the floor, leaning back on her hands. 'When will he come back?'

Carefully, Augustine slipped off of the chair and reached out to put a hand on Lisa's thigh. 'You need to be calm, all right?'

Immediately, Lisa started sobbing, prompting Augustine to help her lie back and start fanning her face. Lisa began breathing quickly, her eyes rolling about.

'My _God_, where did you get your LPN? A correspondence course?' murmured Melissa from the couch, and Augustine gave her a fleeting dirty look.

'Lisa,' Augustine said, a psych-nurse smile pasted on her face. 'Lisa, I need you to look at me.'

Melissa tipped her head, looking at them before standing shakily and walking to the kitchen. As Augustine tried to keep Lisa focused, Melissa used her good arm to pick up a bottle of ammonia from under the sink, set it on the counter then dip the corner of a dishcloth in the liquid. She walked back to the living room, catching the sight of Hediyeh and Jonathan sitting at the top of the stairs, before going to Lisa and Augustine and breezing the cloth under Lisa's nose. In an instant, Lisa's eyes refocused and she started breathing more slowly, backing as far away from the ammonia as possible.

'Good,' Augustine said softly, holding the sides of Lisa's face. 'Cough for me.'

Lisa coughed, blinking slowly before closing her eyes.

'None of that,' said the nurse, tipping back her head. 'Open your eyes, keep looking at me.'

Settled down beside her, Melissa reached out again and ran the cloth under Lisa's nose. She coughed again.

'Hediyeh Mahdis Rippner!' Melissa yelled. 'Come down here and get a glass of orange juice and a straw for your mom.'

Hediyeh slipped down the stairs, followed by Jonathan, who went over to his mother and sat beside her head, rubbing her hair back from her face as he looked at her moderately calmly. Lisa breathed slowly as Augustine squeezed her hand reassuringly. After a few moments, Hediyeh walked over with a glass of juice, popping a straw into it as she sat down next to Melissa.

'I'm gonna help you up now, okay?' said Augustine with a tranquil tone, putting an arm under Lisa's shoulders before raising her up slowly. 'Go ahead and drink some juice.'

Hediyeh held out the glass expectantly, steadying the straw as her mother began sipping at it. They all sat in silence, watching Lisa as she drank, Jonathan pressing his face between Lisa's forearm and Augustine's upper arm with his eyes shut. Twisting around a bit, Augustine took her free hand and reached in to poke Jonathan's nose.

'Hey buddy,' she said, looking him in the eyes when he slipped out to look at her. 'Can you go get a sheet and a towel for me from the laundry room?'

Without a question, Jonathan got up and ran to the stairs, going up them fast enough that his hands were on the stairs as he made his way up. There was the thumping of his feet and he ran to the laundry room near his bedroom, opening the dryer and pulling out a sheet. A moment later, he appeared at the top of the stairs and walked down carefully one step at a time, the sheet mostly in a ball piled on his shoulder.

'Can you sit up on your own now?' Augustine asked Lisa, waiting until she nodded to slowly take her arm off of Lisa's back.

Taking the sheet from Jonathan, Augustine carefully folded it into a thick triangle. Setting it on the coffee table, she gingerly took Melissa's arm and wrapped the towel around it like batting. Moving behind her, she picked up the sheet and wove it around from the back of her neck to under her right arm. Wrapping it up around her injured arm, she tied it up around Melissa's collarbone before tucking the extra under the other woman's elbow.

'I think it's just a fracture,' Augustine assured her before turning back to Lisa. 'Feeling better now?'

Lisa nodded and Hediyeh pulled the juice cup to her chest, looking worriedly at her mother. 'Mommy, do you want to go up and lie down in bed?'

'At least lie down on the couch, Lisa,' Melissa said, offering the hand of her good arm to the other woman. 'Come on.'

Augustine and Melissa helped her up, walking her over to the couch and letting her lie down. Jonathan walked over to one of the chairs and picked up a pillow, putting it under his mother's head and going back to rubbing her hair, bending down to kiss her lightly on the forehead. Sitting on the edge of the coffee table, Augustine reached out and rubbed Lisa's stomach carefully.

'Would you like for us to discuss this in here, or should Melissa and I go to the office?'

'I have to find out some time,' Lisa replied, her colouring having noticeably returned to her cheeks.

'There is a very good chance that your husband just suffered a serious mental lapse,' said Augustine as diplomatically as possible. 'I've only seen one patient with this, but I've read a few case studies of people with his disease that have experienced this same lapse.'

'He's had one before,' said Melissa, settling on the arm of the couch.

'Really,' Augustine said, tipping her head to look at Melissa. 'When?'

'When he was ten.'

'Oh, when he...' replied Augustine, drifting off.

Lisa was suddenly very alert. 'Wait, how did you know—'

Melissa shifted, suddenly avoiding Lisa's accusative glare. She put her lips against the palm of her left hand with her fingers resting on the cheekbone, her eyes cutting over to Augustine as the younger woman just smiled uncomfortably.

'I...' she murmured, looking between Melissa and Lisa until Melissa shrugged and sighed.

Slipping over to sit on the edge of the couch next to Lisa, Augustine rested her hand on Lisa's stomach protectively as she looked Lisa straight in the eyes.

'I already knew Melissa because she worked with my parents,' Augustine said slowly. 'And I think you knew my parents.'

'What?' Lisa asked, pressing against Jonathan's little hand. 'Who?'

'Well, I...' Augustine started, suddenly flustered. 'You didn't know my parents when they were married; in fact, you probably didn't even know that they were married at one time. Your husband knows, and he knows who my parents are, but—'

'God, Augustine,' Melissa said, exasperated. 'Do I have to tell her?'

'No!' she said, squeezing her lips together. 'I can do it myself.'

A long silence passed during which Augustine popped her jaw back and forth before Melissa reached out with her foot and poked the younger woman.

'All right!' Augustine squealed. 'The reason why Jackson didn't want me around, the reason why he _fired_ me was not because I overheard that phone call—it was because he got my birth certificate from a woman in Geneva, and of course my birth certificate has my parents on it.'

'Why would he fire you because of your parents?' Lisa asked with an uncomfortable smile as Hediyeh came around and laid her head on Augustine's leg.

'Because he knew my parents too well and was afraid I'd end up being like they ended up being when he knew them,' Augustine said with her eyebrows raised worriedly. 'The name I use is the one given to me by my adoptive parents; I was born Zoë Greene. My mother was Dr Elisabeth Millwood, and my father was Dr Philip Greene.'


	7. Midnight, 6 August 2009

'She's asleep.'

Augustine looked up lazily from her magazine to Melissa, who was coming down the stairs. A fire was crackling in the fireplace as Hediyeh slept on the couch, her head in Augustine's lap. On her other side, Jonathan was slumped over, halfway watching the television and trying to pretend that he was such a big boy for staying up past ten. He yawned and nuzzled against Augustine.

'Was she upset?' asked Augustine quietly, dropping the magazine onto the floor before reaching around Jonathan and pulling him onto her leg, the one that Hediyeh wasn't sleeping against. He curled to her chest.

'I think it brought up a few memories,' Melissa said with a shrug. 'But I think right now she's just missing Jackson and wondering why he hasn't come home yet.'

'Were you able to get her mom's number from her?'

'I just took her phone,' Melissa replied as she stepped off of the bottom stair, walking across the wood floor in bare feet. 'I think we should wait a few more hours though.'

'Why?' she asked, giving Melissa a disbelieving look.

'He might come back,' she said with a little shrug. 'As far as we know, he's just gone back to his office and will come back after a few hours.'

Augustine popped her jaw again, narrowing her eyes at Melissa. 'I deal with crazies day in and day out. If one of them leaves, we have to find that person _immediately_. We don't just let them wander around in the city unattended; we call their primary care physician or therapist and track them down. We don't say "oh, he's gone home" or "perhaps he just went out for pirogies;" no, we find them right then and there.'

'You haven't dealt with Jackson before.'

'I've seen him more recently than you have,' she snapped back. 'He's been out late before at work, but he's always sent someone to tell us. He's never come home and then left again, and he certainly hasn't acted that violent. I mean, for God's sake, Melissa, look what he did to your _arm_!'

Melissa flexed her fingers in the triangle still holding her arm up.

'You should probably go to Mt Sinai or Bellevue to get that taken care of,' said Augustine, looking down at Jonathan, who was now sleeping, one of his thumbs in his mouth. 'I'll stay here.'

'I'm not going to the hospital,' Melissa said flippantly. 'My arm feels fine and I don't want the questions.'

'Say you fell running down the stairs to the subway,' the younger woman replied. 'It was rainy today, so it wouldn't be a surprise.'

Melissa didn't make a move, instead just sitting on one of the chairs and staring at the fire. The television played silently with misspelled closed captioning running along the bottom of the screen, but no one was bothering to watch the news. Both of the adults reviewed the last few hours in their heads.

'I saw that horrible Grecian woman today.'

The redheaded woman made a choking noise. 'What? Where?'

'At the hospital,' Augustine murmured, resting her head on Jonathan's as she rubbed Hediyeh's back. 'She shoved me into a storage closet and held a scalpel to my throat. I don't think she knew that I know what she smells like, and what her voice sounds like.'

'What was she doing here?' Melissa asked rhetorically. 'I don't suppose she was kind enough to tell you.'

'She said that someone was going to ask me about the conversation Jackson had with Anaïs, and that I wasn't supposed to tell that person about what I heard. From how she was saying things, I was afraid she might come after the kids,' Augustine replied. 'Hediyeh rides the L from Chapin every afternoon at about that time, so I figured I might be able to catch her if I ran from the hospital, and I was right.'

'Do you think that she's done something to Jackson?'

'No,' Augustine answered a bit brusquely. 'No, he brought this upon himself.'

Another bit of silence. 'What happened during that phone call?'

'I only heard one side.'

'Yeah, but you must have heard something important to have Eleni after you,' said Melissa, leaning forward in her chair. Her hair glistened in the firelight, making her look devious and partially Satanic.

'He told Anaïs that Poulain wasn't trying to kill her because she's too important to him,' said Augustine, leaning her head back as she thought. 'Something about Poulain finishing something... I think they were speaking in code, because it made no sense. They went on for about ten minutes, then he just stood in his office pacing and yelling her name into the phone and telling her to speak.'

'Anaïs was killed when she was on the phone with Jackson?'

'I don't know,' Augustine said in a tiny voice. 'To be honest, I think...'

As she drifted off, Melissa just leaned closer, her eyes begging for more. 'What? You think what?'

'I think she killed herself,' Augustine replied, looking over at Melissa with her eyebrows knit.

'Are you serious?' Melissa asked, finally falling back into the chair.

'I don't think... I don't think Jackson was ready for that,' Augustine said, her voice choked. 'One minute you're talking to someone, then you hear a gunshot and a splash, and that's it. He just—'

'Augustine, he's a hired killer,' Melissa replied with a little laugh. 'He's used to death and gore; he's even killed a few himself.'

'This was different,' Augustine replied sternly. 'He knew her, and he knew that without her mediating, something was going to happen, something horrible.'

Melissa gave her a suspicious look. 'What do you know that you're not telling me?'

'Jackson knew the disease he had; he's known it forever,' said Augustine with a vague smile. 'Times that he felt like he didn't want to be involved in something, if he actually felt feelings about a cause, Anaïs would lie for him to make him seem flawless to Poulain. He knew what she was doing and they had an unspoken understanding that very few people knew about. Poulain trusted her with him because he thought she was _his _confidante, but really she only cared for Jackson and his interests.'

Hediyeh moaned and shifted on Augustine's leg; she looked down at her for a moment until it was apparent that she was still sleeping.

'Anaïs was there with Poulain when his son Lucien died,' Augustine continued in a hushed voice. 'She hid it from him, but it was a love suicide. Lucien wanted to have a normal life with Meryem, but Poulain wanted nothing of the sort. He wanted to have a couple of stoic sons with no ties to anything or anyone. Lucien and Meryem knew they'd never be able to be together, so they killed each other.'

'How did you find this out?' asked Melissa, mesmerised.

'Momma,' said Augustine quickly. 'Anaïs didn't want that to happen to Jackson. She knew that he had that softer side that Poulain knew nothing about. She kept in contact with his American assassin and he filled her in on all of the details about how Jackson behaved around Lisa, and she knew that because of his lust for her, he'd never be able to be what Poulain wanted. Either he had to escape legally or Poulain would kill him, so she took charge.'

Augustine shifted Jonathan on her lap before curling him tightly in her arms and standing. Hediyeh sat up and rubbed her eyes, looking at Augustine with blurry eyes.

'Time for bed now,' Augustine said, taking Hediyeh's hand and guiding her toward the stairs. As Hediyeh started up, Augustine turned back to Melissa. 'Hey, I'll be right back once the kids are in bed.'

Melissa watched after them until the edges of Augustine's muddy pink scrubs disappeared into the darkness of the middle floor of the house. Overhead, she could hear the murmur of voices as the nanny put the kids to bed, and the murmuring let her mind wander. Staring into the fire, she tried to remember anything about Anaïs that would have hinted to the fact that she would be so strongly pulling for Jackson. They weren't the same age, but Anaïs wasn't old enough to be Jackson's mother; Anaïs had worked for Poulain since she graduated from high school in Switzerland, where she'd been attending as a foreign exchange student from Madagascar; she didn't have any family that she ever mentioned; and Poulain was basically never seen without her. She went to all of his meetings, on all of his vacations though not necessarily right next to him all the time, they worked twenty feet away from each other at the office, and Anaïs stayed there as long as Poulain did, even if he worked for twenty hours straight. To hear that Anaïs had nearly _betrayed_ Poulain was absolutely stunning to her, something that caught her completely off-guard.

'Testicles.'

Melissa snapped her head, looking over at Augustine, who was again sitting at the couch. 'What?'

'I tried saying other words, but you didn't respond,' she said smoothly. 'The kids are in bed. Do you want to hear more, or are you—'

'How did Anaïs protect Jackson?' interrupted Melissa. 'I mean, how did she avoid Poulain finding out?'

'Who else did he trust more than Anaïs?' asked Augustine. 'By the time she died, she'd worked for him for twenty years, and he was completely dependant on her. If Anaïs didn't give him the message, he didn't get the message, you know? That sort of thing.'

'So you're saying that Poulain's senility allowed Anaïs to aid Jackson?'

'That's what she thought,' Augustine replied with a pained look on her face. 'And this is where the phone conversation turned out to be so important.'

'You said they were speaking in code.'

'Only after Jackson remembered I could speak French,' Augustine said quickly, holding a finger up. 'Anaïs apparently found out that Poulain was privy to her dealings.'

'Why didn't he find out years ago if she's been working to protect Jackson so long?' asked Melissa.

'A new woman came to the Geneva office from the Athens office,' responded Augustine darkly. 'One who has had a certain obsession with Jackson Rippner since she trained under my father.'

Melissa looked at her unbelievingly. 'Come on, you're telling me that a bimbo like her actually managed to bring down Anaïs Vioget?'

'Where there's a will, there's a way, and trust me, she has the will,' she replied. 'Crazy will. Anaïs depended on Poulain's being too busy running the Society to bother with Jackson, but she changed everything. It was like suddenly having a person in charge of the Jackson wing of the World Society. When she found out about what Anaïs was doing, she let Poulain know, and Poulain let Anaïs know about the accusations being thrown upon her.'

'So she killed herself.'

'Killed herself before anyone else could,' Augustine repeated. 'But she _was_ kind enough to give Jackson advanced warning, I guess. I don't think it all worked out like she wanted it to.'

'She intended for Jackson to prepare for an onslaught, but this time, he knows he has weaknesses and is afraid that something will happen to them. I don't think it would affect him as much if Lisa weren't pregnant again, but having her in a high-risk pregnancy whilst this all goes down...'

'They've been firing workers.'

'Who?'

'The World Society.'

'Are you serious?' asked Melissa, gaping. 'People I would know?'

'Maybe some of them, yeah,' replied Augustine, tipping her head and looking up at the ceiling in thought. 'Mostly administrative... oh! Did you know Merit Browning?'

'Used to be Jackson's secretary?'

'Yeah,' she said, nodding vigorously.


	8. 11 August 2009

In the fall of 2006, Jeff Ingram, a Canadian native living in Washington State, left his house to drive north and visit family in Canada. He didn't come home that night, nor the next, nor the next—in fact, he didn't come home until over a month later, and then it was only because his fiancée identified him on a television report. Somehow, in a mysteriously missing four days, he travelled all the way from Olympia to Denver. In Denver, he woke up on the ground outside an office building and ended up in a hospital where he was diagnosed with an acute form of amnesia. He'd experienced the same thing eleven years earlier and disappeared for nine months before being found just a few hundred miles away in Seattle.

Currently, the case file of this man was the only thing standing between Lisa Rippner and insanity, and her mother knew this very well. Since Carol and Joe had arrived from their respective states four days earlier, neither of them had seen Lisa do much besides sleep and read, every now and then mustering the strength to come downstairs and sit with her children for a little while as they tried to keep their normal schedule with the help of their reinstated nanny and their grandfather. Augustine and Joe had been taking them to school every day and helping them with their homework every night, and both Carol and Augustine were doing what they could to keep Lisa comfortable as she lived her days in a depressive haze.

'Augustine,' Lisa murmured, her face partially buried in her husband's pillow.

'Hm?' asked Augustine, not looking up from the game of checkers she was losing to Joe.

'Can you get me some grapefruit juice?'

Augustine looked up from the checkers, propping her chin up on the palm of her hand. 'It'll be a few minutes—you drank the last of it earlier.'

'I'd really like some,' Lisa replied in a half-voice, keeping her back to her father and the nurse.

Joe and Augustine looked at one another from across the table as Augustine stood, grabbing her purse from under her chair before walking to the door and out into the hallway. Once she stepped into the elevator, Joe stood and walked over to the other side of the bed. Pulling a chair from the corner, he sat down in front of Lisa's face. Her eyes were red and puffy.

'Is she gone?'

'Yes,' he said, reaching out to wipe away some residue from dried tears from her face. Carefully, he pushed her hair behind her ear. 'Don't worry, Leese. We'll find him and he'll be just fine.'

'_Fine_ is a very relative term in our family, Dad,' Lisa replied pessimistically.

'Jackson kept a lot of secrets to try to protect you,' said a voice from the door and Lisa immediately sat up, looking wide-eyed at the woman leaning against the doorframe. 'Some things ended up being out of his control.'

'What do you know about this?' asked Lisa.

'It has something to do with the Society, that much I can tell you,' replied the woman, walking in and sitting on the edge of the bed a foot or so from Lisa. 'What I can not tell you is what the Society wishes to do with Jackson.'

'Can't tell me or won't tell me?'

'Can not tell you,' she replied honestly, meeting Lisa's eyes. 'If you really wish to know, I have been released from my contract.'

Looking between the two women, Joe awkwardly stuck his hand out. 'I'm Joe Reisert, Lisa's father.'

The woman gave him a dry smile, reaching out to take his hand. 'Lyna Melinyshyn, I used to work with your son-in-law.'

'Why did they release you from your contract?' asked Lisa, grabbing up handfuls of her duvet and holding them to her chest.

'Restructuring,' Lyna said simply. 'The rumour going around the European circuit is that the patron is working on shutting down the entire Society.'

New tears gathered at the edges of Lisa's eyes. 'Do you have any idea where my husband is?'

'I have already told you,' Lyna spat, leaning in to get closer to Lisa. 'I do not know what the patron has in mind for your husband. Best guess, he is dead or he is alive. Does that narrow it for you?'

Rather than crying, however, Lisa just narrowed her eyes at Lyna, dropping her hands and holding taut the duvet cover over her lap. Her jaw set, she breathed very carefully.

'As stubborn as always,' said Lyna, standing up and putting her hands on her hips. 'I came here from Kiev to tell you that I know someone who saw your husband with another woman the night he disappeared.'

Lisa and Joe's hearts skipped beats in simpatico, but for different reasons. Immediately, Joe became enraged, reaching out to take one of Lisa's hands, but Lisa was more interested in Lyna continuing. She stared at her.

'On his way home from his office, he was talking to a woman on the subway,' Lyna continued, tapping a long nail against her bottom lip before biting at it lightly. 'They had a conversation that left Jackson very flustered, and my contact told me that the woman stole Jackson's phone from him when he got off the train. It was suspicious to her, but what made it more suspicious is that Jackson seemed to know her and responded positively to her presence.'

'Who was this woman?' asked Lisa as Joe set his jaw. 'The one who saw Jackson?'

'She was Jackson's secretary in Miami,' Lyna replied sleekly, suddenly concentrating more on Joe's response to what she was saying. 'She was laid off at the same time as I was and has recently moved up here to New York.'

'We need to talk to her,' Lisa said frantically, taking her hand from her father's and pulling the sheets off of her. 'Where is she?'

The elevator dinged and Lyna turned around, looking wordlessly at the woman who was walking in with a grocery bag. Augustine seemed surprised to see her, dropping the bag on the floor and raising her eyebrows. What was more surprising to all of them, however, was the fact that Augustine was followed by two members of the New York City Police Department dressed to the nines in their uniforms. Joe stood, trying to make it to the door to talk to the police officers, but Lisa grabbed at him. Lyna moved aside, her arms crossed as she watched the police follow Augustine into the bedroom.

The shorter of the two officers flipped open his badge. 'Mrs Rippner, we're with the NYPD.'

In any normal situation, Lisa would have cringed at the obviousness of what he said, but this time, she just stared, terrified.

'Your husband was recently reported missing,' said the other officer. 'There have been some developments in the case and we'd like for you to come to the main precinct with us.'

Lisa's heart dropped down into her stomach. Slowly, she moved her mouth around, but words didn't form.

'Ma'am, we need you to stay ca—'

'No, no no,' said Augustine, grabbing at the man's arm. 'Can we please go talk down in the living room about this?'

The two officers looked at each other questioningly, but neither made a move to fight Augustine's advice.

'Mr Reisert, stay here with Lisa, okay?' Augustine asked as she started to turn around and head for the stairs, but Lisa quickly threw her legs over the side of the bed and strode over to the group of people at the door.

'I want to know what you found out,' Lisa said strongly as she smoothed down her hair, her brows knit. 'I need to know this.'

The taller officer took charge. 'At six o'clock this evening, a couple of kids in Brooklyn were walking along the banks of the East River down the way from the Williamsburg Bridge. Around the Navy Yard, they started looking for things that had washed up on the bank and they found, well...'

The man drifted off and gave Lisa a sympathetic look. It took a long moment for what he'd said to set in, but when it did, her hands flew to her mouth and she gasped for air.

'I'm sorry, Mrs Rippner,' said the other officer as Lisa stepped back, shaking her head jerkily.

'Lyna,' Joe said, his tone very straight as he stepped forward and grabbed his daughter by the shoulders. 'I need you to go down to the kitchen and get Lisa's mother.'

For a fleeting moment, Lyna had that 'I'm not a gofer for you' look, but it faded quickly before she slinked past the policemen and down the stairs. Once she was gone, Joe pulled Lisa back to sit in the chair as she started hiccoughing in her attempt to stop herself from crying. As Joe crouched down in front of his daughter, Augustine gestured the policemen into the hall and closed the door behind her. They walked down the hallway and almost to the master bath before Augustine turned and looked at them very seriously.

'How do you know it was him?' she asked in a hushed voice.

'The body fits the physical description of Mr Rippner,' said the taller officer, reaching into his breast pocket to pull out a small stack of photos. 'And he's wearing Mr Rippner's wedding ring.'

Augustine paused for a moment before reaching out and taking the photos from his hand. She looked at each one slowly, gnawing at her lip as she did so. 'Shit.'

Before she was able to look at all of them, there was the thumping of people coming up the stairs and Carol appeared, quickly going into the master bedroom and shutting the door loudly behind her. A few seconds later, Lyna walked up, still looking more than moderately put out rather than upset. Looking between the glass door and the group at the bathroom, she walked towards the police and Augustine, who immediately held out the photographs to her.

'The cadaver?' Lyna asked flippantly as she took the photos. She only looked at a few, however, before pressing the pile to the shorter policeman's chest. '_This_ is not Jackson Rippner.'

'What?' said Augustine before the policemen could respond. 'Lyna, it looks exactly—'

'It is not Jackson,' replied Lyna sternly. 'I know him _intimately_.'

The taller policeman raised an eyebrow, looking through the glass at the crying woman sitting in the bedroom and back at the sultry Ukrainian woman. 'And you are...?'

'A work associate,' she answered simply.

'_You_ work for Crédit Suisse?' asked the shorter policeman gauchely.

'The World Society,' Lyna replied harshly. 'We worked together when Jackson was in high school and college. He was under me as an intern.'

Augustine scrunched her face at the connotation of what Lyna said, but the policemen didn't seem to catch it. The taller one spoke again. 'How do you know this isn't Jackson Rippner?'

With a little smile, she took her finger and poked at the top picture of the body. Looking down at her finger on his chest, the shorter policeman tried to see what she was pointing at before finally taking the photograph and letting the others fall to the floor. It was a full shot of the body, and both men looked at the picture before Lyna stepped between then and pointed directly at the penis of the corpse.

'Jackson Rippner, I assure you...' she started, her voice soft but with a slight erotic edge to it. 'Is uncircumcised.'

'Oh Jesus,' said Augustine, burying her face in her hands.

'Despite what you've, um, told us, Miss...?'

'Melinyshyn.'

'Miss Melinyshyn, we need to have members of the family of the missing person come down to precinct and ID the body.'

As if on cue, the door behind them opened and Lisa stepped out shadowed by her parents. She seemed moderately composed, had her hair tied back and had thrown a large sweater over her tank top.

'Augustine, Lyna, I'd like for you two to stay here,' she said softly, rolling the ends of the sleeves of the sweater in her palms. 'You two take care of the kids, and my parents will come with me to the station.'

Augustine nodded, walking away without a word. Lyna waited until she had started down the stairs before walking to Lisa and looking her straight in the eyes.

'That is not your husband. Do not go in there thinking that it is him or that is all you will see. I did the same thing with my mother, and I will not let you do it. It is not him.'

Lisa nodded as she looked at the other woman, who leaned over after a moment's pause and kissed her on each cheek before turning and following Augustine, who was looking up at them from the landing below. Once they were out of sight, Joe spoke.

'Do you mind if we follow you in our car?'

'That's no problem,' replied the shorter police officer as Lisa walked over and pressed the elevator call button.

---

People say that existence is circular—déjà vu, reincarnation, straight repetition, circle of life, all of that. People are born at the same time that people die; when something horrible happens, something good usually comes from it; and, in the case of Dr Chitose Wakahara, sometimes you do the autopsy on both the victim _and_ the would-be killer, and sometimes it even happens a few years apart. What wasn't at all normal, however, was managing to autopsy the wannabe killer before the victim, especially because the victim happened to be very fresh.

As she stood over their John Doe, assumed to be Jackson Rippner from the wedding ring sitting on the metal tray next to the body. The man was still wet, his hair plastered to his forehead. A white sheet was pulled to just below his chin, brushing up against a few days of rough, dark stubble. Just a few minutes earlier, she'd received word from the cops sent out to inform the family that Jackson Rippner's wife would, in fact, be coming in that evening to identify the body. Her task was to make him look passable by doing things like making sure the possible widow couldn't see the gaping gunshot wound on the back of the man's head or the fact that his rib cage was basically shattered even before she came in with her bolt cutters and finished the job to access his organs. Her assistant had sprayed the blood from the floor and assured that the gurney was clean before throwing a crisp sheet over the one already over the body.

Picking up the wedding ring with a latex-covered hand, he looked up at his superior with a raised eyebrow. 'Should we give this to his widow?'

Dr Wakahara looked up from her notes, her hand paused in mid-air as she flipped a page. 'We don't know she's his widow yet.'

'It's a custom-made ring,' he said with an uncomfortable smile. 'The detective said that the jeweller even faxed the work order for it and identified the markings on the inside of the ring. I mean, we're just prolonging this woman's suffering.'

She just stared at him for a few seconds before looking down at her notes again. 'Just take the body to the viewing room.'

He shrugged, dropping the ring back onto the metal tray with a clatter. Dr Wakahara jumped a little and gave his back a dirty look as he walked out pushing the gurney. He took it from the autopsy area into a small room that on one side was a reinforced glass window covered with blinds. On the other side of the window, he could hear approaching voices, so he took his stance beside the body and waited for the blinds to open.

Out in the hallway, Dr Wakahara stepped out of the morgue and made her way toward the little group of people. A detective was talking in low tones to a couple older people who were supporting an ashen younger woman between them. The younger woman's eyes stayed focused completely on the ground, and it was very obvious that she wasn't listening to a single word the detective was saying. When she finally stood straight up in front of the window, Dr Wakahara felt a little gnawing pain in her stomach upon seeing that the poor woman was very obviously pregnant.

'Ah, here she is now,' said the detective. 'Dr Chitose Wakahara, our lead forensic pathologist.'

'It's a pleasure to meet you, though I wish it were under different circumstances,' she said, holding out her hand for Lisa to shake. The younger woman did so, and Dr Wakahara let the tips of her fingers pause upon the ring on Lisa's finger after finishing the shake. 'Mrs Rippner, the body was found with this on his left hand.'

Reaching into her lab coat pocket, she grabbed up the ring before taking Lisa's hand and placing it into her upturned palm. Lisa stared at it for a moment before picking it up, holding it between her thumb and index finger as she studied it. Tears gathered at the edges of her eyes, and all at once she just collapsed to the ground sobbing. Everyone with her followed her down in a panic except for the detective, who mumbled something about getting some water and then wandered off.

'Oh God,' Lisa sobbed, grabbing at her father's shirt. 'Daddy, I can't do this without him!'

'Honey, honey,' Joe said, holding her close as Carol rubbed Lisa's back. 'It's just the ring. The ring could have been stolen from him and used on another body. When your mom and I got divorced, I was able to take my ring off, see?'

He held out his ringless hand, but it didn't seem to calm Lisa down as much as he'd hoped.

'Remember what Lyna said to you,' said Carol quickly. 'Don't let yourself get worked up thinking it's him. You need to take a serious look at the body before making any future decisions. Now take a few deep breaths and calm down—your father and I will look at the body and you can look at it after us, all right? Just stay right here as we go look.'

Lisa nodded, licking her lips before putting her hands protectively around her stomach. Her parents looked at one another before standing and going to where Dr Wakahara was already standing, her hand on the pull for the blinds. She tapped the glass with her clipboard before starting to lift them.

'As you probably know, he was found over in the East River earlier this evening,' she said in very low tones, getting as close to Lisa's parents as she could. 'We figured that the cause of death would be drowning or injuries from impact, but instead, we found that the person,' she paused to lean in further and speak in an even softer voice. 'Committed suicide. Probably got to the top of the bridge, put a gun in his mouth and shot. Body fell down to the river, shows injuries from impact like a crushed ribcage and broken neck.'

Carol and Joe both looked at the body, Joe rubbing at his beard the whole time.

'I just don't know,' Carol finally said to her ex-husband. 'I mean, it looks a lot like him, but I think only Lisa would know whether or not that's her husband.'

Joe just nodded before turning around and helping Lisa to her feet. With his arm around her waist, he led her to the window, and she placed her hands on the glass, leaning in as far as she could. Her breath made little condensation rings on the surface.

'I need to see the entire body,' Lisa said in a strained voice, her entire body noticeably shaking.

'Do you think this is a good idea?' Dr Wakahara asked Lisa's parents, and both of them nodded.

With the affirmation, Dr Wakahara tipped her head to her assistant and he lifted the sheets, pulling them slowly back until they were gathered in a folded pile at the man's feet. He picked it up and threw it over his arms, looking down at the body rather than making eye contact with Lisa.

At first, Lisa let out a strangled cry, but then remembering what Lyna had said, she composed herself and began critiquing the body. It was impossible to see the scars on his neck and chest because of the damaged caused by the fall; the hands looked the same if not a bit swollen; he had nearly the same amount of freckles she remember Jackson having, but they stood out much more against the pallid skin; there was something off about the facial hair, which made her squeeze together her eyebrows questioningly.

'What is it?' asked her father.

'Jackson's facial hair grows in red,' Lisa replied, poking at the window. 'That doesn't look very red, does it?'

Joe took off his glasses and wiped the lenses on his shirt before taking a step forward and looking where she was pointing. 'No, it doesn't look very red to me.'

A little flutter of hope appeared deep in Lisa's being. Fortified by this, she continued her scan of the body, pausing just at the place where Lyna had.

'It's not him,' she said strongly. 'I know it's not him.'

'You're certain?' asked Dr Wakahara, looking from her clipboard to the body beyond the glass.

'How do you know, honey?' asked Carol.

Lisa's face turned red and she refused to make eye contact with her parents, even in the reflection. 'Wife's intuition?'

'Wife's intuition doesn't make the wife blush,' said Joe with a smile, patting his daughter's back.

Awkwardly, Lisa pointed through the window. 'Jackson isn't circumcised, and this guy is.'


	9. 4 and 6 September 2009

A/N: It's 7 April and it's spitting snow in Middle Tennessee. I find this totally unacceptable.

---

It was true, she'd only been to the Rippner house for two days nearly a month before, but that didn't stop Melissa Bayley from immediately being able to break in the front door without alerting the doorman, fool the elevator into thinking the keycard that she had actually matched the one in its system and make it to the sixth floor of the place before anyone was the wiser. The doors slid open and she held the thick stack of papers in her hands against her chest, taking a strong stride out and turning to walk toward Lisa Rippner, whose head she could see sticking up from the couch. She was about to open her mouth when she noticed two other women who were also in the living room.

'And then last week, during the full moon, I had a guest utterly spazzing at me because his phone didn't work and he was convinced that he was going to have a heart attack and not be able to call for help,' said another redhead, her eyes wide as she spoke in a tone that seemed almost stream-of-conscious. 'I swear, there is a sign outside the hotel that only crazy people can see, and it says "hey crazy people, come stay here!"'

By the time Melissa made it to where the other redhead could see her, Lisa was just smiling uncomfortably. 'That's why I don't work at a hotel anymore.'

'Not all of us can marry an insanely rich gu—' she started before putting her hand over her mouth.

The woman sitting next to her gave her a very dirty look before looking at Lisa. 'I'm sorry, Mrs Rippner. You know how my little sister is—flighty.'

'Hello, Merit.'

The older redheaded sister looked from Lisa to Melissa. 'Melissa-motherfucking-Bayley! How are you?'

Merit walked over to her, her arms held open wide. The two women hugged as Melissa spoke. 'What are you doing here?'

'Word's gotten around about Jackson,' she said, stepping back and raising her eyebrows. 'My sister was coming up here for a convention, so I thought I'd just tag along and see what was up.'

'Liar,' said Melissa with a laugh. 'Lyna told me that you saw Jackson on the subway before he disappeared.'

Merit smiled at her. 'I didn't realise you were still speaking to Lyna.'

A long moment passed, the two women smiling awkwardly at each other before Melissa broke their impromptu staring contest and turned to hold out her stack of papers toward Lisa. 'I looked up all of Jackson's aliases and all of them have been out of use since right before the two of you got married except for one of them.'

Lisa reached out and took the stack of papers, flipping through them. 'Christian Poulain? Why does that name sound familiar?'

'Poulain, like the head of the World Society,' Merit butted in. 'When he was first working in the Society, he was given the alias to command respect, and when he quit, Poulain made him keep the passport and other files for the identity.'

Lisa made a scoffing noise. 'Why?'

'Well,' Merit started. 'He's kind of like the heir apparent in a monarchy. Poulain legally adopted him back in, what, 2003?'

'2004,' said Melissa, her arms crossed over her chest.

There was a period of silence as Lisa scanned the pages. 'These go back for the last few months.'

'He's been living a double life!' said Cynthia, slapping her hands on her knees.

The two older redheads openly stared at her, Merit shaking her head. 'Cynthia...'

'Train tickets to Geneva from Zürich,' Lisa muttered. 'That was for the funeral.'

'Some of the charges were made here in New York,' Melissa said, walking over and leaning to run her finger down one of the pages. 'There, there, and there. Just little insignificant purchases, but all made late at night. Didn't you say that his interns would come tell you that he wasn't coming home until late?'

'What does that have to do with anything?'

'I think you need to talk to his interns,' replied Melissa. 'It wouldn't surprise me if Jackson's been just disappearing from work in little spurts and regressing a few years. I don't know why he'd have the Poulain passport and cards on him, and I think that's something we really need to look into.'

'When I saw him leaving the Miami headquarters after his resignation, he put the folder with the Poulain identity in the back seat of his Audi, the one he totalled not too long after on the day of your wedding.'

There was something odd about a woman she'd never met rattling off details of her husband's life, but by this time, Lisa was basically used to things like this. 'So do you think he didn't retrieve the folder from the car?'

'It was actually returned to the Miami office by a tow truck operator who knew the crest of the company. It sat in my desk for awhile, but when Anaïs started being phased out, I changed desks and that's the last time I saw it.'

'You mean when Eleni started getting all up...?' began Melissa.

'Yeah,' said Merit, nodding.

'Who was the woman on the subway with Jackson the day he disappeared?' asked Lisa, staring directly at Merit.

'Blonde woman, but it was definitely dyed,' she said, trying to picture the woman in her head. 'Wore a tailored suit, had a leather bag with her. When he first saw her, he was really happy, thanked her for something, they chatted about your son, but then their voices got lower and they talked seriously. She had him basically pressed against one of the doors, and he tried to get away every now and then, but she wouldn't let him past. There was a little scuffle between them right before the train got into the station, and I think she might have injected him with something.'

'What, like a psychedelic?' asked Melissa.

'Why did you immediately pull for that one?' replied Lisa defensively.

'Did you not see how _crazy_ he was?' gaped Melissa. 'That was not Jackson Rippner in any way, shape or form.'

'Seemed normal to me,' muttered Lisa half-heartedly.

Yet another uncomfortable silence fell over the room as Lisa looked down at the papers in front of her.

'No, these can't be right,' Lisa said softly. 'I know for a fact that Jackson was with me when this purchase was made, but it says he was in Italy.'

Melissa knit her brow, crossing to Lisa and pulling the papers from her hands. She raised an eyebrow. 'You're _sure_ he was with you?'

'It was the day we found out we were having twins,' she said quietly and surely. 'He came to the appointment with me, then we spent the rest of the day with each other.'

Merit walked over to Melissa and looked over her shoulder at the credit card records. 'Maybe none of these were transactions done by him. I mean, it's not that hard to pretend to be someone else, especially because no one checks IDs anymore.'

'Maybe someone was doing it so that he'd have something to look at as proof of his existence as that person,' said Cynthia with a shrug. 'I mean, if he forgot who he was, and then someone printed off those to show to him, he'd probably be more willing to believe that he'd been that person before losing his memory.'

'Did she just say something... _viable_?' asked Merit incredulously.

'You're _mean_,' murmured Cynthia, crossing her arms over her chest.

There was a long moment of silence before Melissa gasped and put her hands up to her mouth. 'Oh God, do you think it's...?'

Merit turned and looked at her. 'No way, Pe—'

'Shh,' said Melissa.

'What?' asked Lisa, sitting up on the edge of her seat.

'The name won't mean anything to you,' Melissa responded, shaking her head. 'Don't worry, we'll take care of it. Your job now is just to take care of those babies.'

The saccharine smile Melissa gave her just boiled her blood, but the anger was cooled immediately as the doors open and Hediyeh bounced in with a cell phone pressed to her ear, throwing down her bag before looking at the women in the room. Her mouth dropped open.

She paused, sliding the phone down the side of her face and slowly snapping it shut. Looking at the four women silently, she slinked up the stairs leaving an awkward, questioning silence in her wake.

---

Lisa Rippner had lived in New York City long enough to know to avoid getting anywhere near Midtown. Murray Hill was fine, SoHo was all right, Chinatown was okay as long as one stayed off the main drag, so on and so forth. Midtown, however, was the home of such things as Times Square, and no real New Yorker wanted to get caught up in that shit. However, today, Lisa found herself going straight into the heart of Midtown, only a couple of blocks up from Times Square and one block from Central Park. As she got off at the subway station and walked up the stairs, she remembered that when they were looking for an apartment in the City, she and Jackson had gone up these exact stairs and he had pointed at one, announcing to her that Dr Elisabeth Millwood had been shot in that exact spot.

She would have avoided that station even if she weren't consciously avoiding Midtown.

It turned out that Lyna Melinyshyn was listed in the thick Manhattan phone book, but she was listed as L. Ruzicka. The entry in Jackson's black book was outdated, listing an address in Prague, but it offered her the woman's alternate name, so after checking the spelling, she just looked in the phone book they'd received a few weeks earlier. Lyna lived in an apartment at the posh Trump Parc, a gold façaded building right on Central Park South.

As she walked down the sidewalk under scaffolding for a building under renovation, she had to push past map-holding tourists and listen over the wet woosh of taxis. This part of town always looked dingy to her despite the extraneous lighting, and she was much more than happy when she was able to duck into the marble entry of the building. She unbuttoned her coat and shrugged it off, putting it over her arm before walking up to the doorman.

'Hello,' she said in a quiet voice. 'I'm here to see Lyna Ruzicka.'

'Is Miss Ruzicka expecting you?' he asked in an equally quiet voice.

'No,' Lisa responded. 'She's a work associate of my husband's, and I need to talk to her desperately. Is there any way you could call her?'

'May I tell her who is calling?'

'Lisa Rippner,' she responded as he picked up the phone and quickly dialled a number.

As he waited and spoke to Lyna, Lisa wandered around the foyer a bit, looking around the mirrored walls at her reflection. Not surprisingly, she looked absolutely exhausted. Her hair was a mess, her skin was splotchy, and the blouse she wore under her tweed jumper was all wrinkled. With a sigh, she ran her fingers through her hair, trying to tame the curls. After tucking her hair behind her ears, she smoothed out the dress over her stomach, thinking about how immaculate Lyna looked whenever she saw her. Her hair was always perfect; even without makeup, she had flawless skin; and above all, she was tall with an hourglass figure.

Her last few days had been a mess. Since talking with Merit and Melissa, she was absolutely convinced that there was another woman involved with Jackson. Whether it was the woman on the subway or someone else, it gave her a very sudden inferiority complex. Had Jackson run away to be with this other woman rather than staying with her because of something she'd done? Did he not want to have any more children, or was he no longer attracted to her because of her pregnancy? This track of thought tormented her and without even realising it, she started crying.

'No, no, come on now,' said a voice behind her, and she felt thin arms slip around her shoulders and lead her towards the elevator. 'Let us go upstairs.'

Once they were in the elevator, Lisa turned to look at Lyna and was relaxed by what she saw. Lyna was dressed in flannel pyjama pants, her feet in fuzzy house shoes, and wore a hoodie from the bookstore Strand over a man's undershirt. Her long black hair was in an elastic, the front held taut but the length in messy loops and falling down. No makeup was on her face, making her freckles stand out under her glasses, which had one arm held on to the frames with a safety pin. She stood with a hand on one hip, watching the lights signalling the passing of floors. When the door opened again, she reached back and took Lisa's hand, leading her to an apartment that had the door propped open by the lock. She pulled her in, closing the door behind her.

As Lyna locked the door, Lisa looked at the incredibly messy apartment. Three computers sat on a table, each with the screen full of open windows, and there were papers on the desk, on the window seat, all over the tables, everywhere. There was very little lighting anywhere but at the desk.

'I have been working a little to find your husband,' she said, walking by Lisa and rubbing her eyes. She made her way to the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter. 'Would you care for a cuppa?'

Lisa put her hand atop her stomach. 'I'm not supposed to have any caffeine.'

'Is that so?' Lyna asked, taking a long sip of her coffee before walking past Lisa again.

Lisa took a few steps into the main living area of the small apartment as Lyna went over to the couch and pushed some of the papers to one side to clear a space.

'Please, sit,' Lyna said, gesturing to the empty square as she walked over and dragged her computer chair over near the couch.

Putting her coat over the arm of the couch, Lisa sat down and looked at the Ukrainian woman who seemed so incredibly different in her own environment. Gone was the cold assassin who fit so well with her husband, who her husband was always complaining about because of her stand-offish personality, and instead it was like she was sitting with an old friend or some random graduate student she'd run into on the street.

'You are wondering who Eleni is,' said Lyna suddenly before taking another sip of her coffee.

Lisa looked shocked. 'How did you—'

'You know that she is the secretary for the head of the World Society,' interrupted Lyna. 'You found her business card that she gave Jackson when they met after the funeral.'

'Had they met before the funeral?'

'Not that I know of, at least not face to face,' the other woman replied. 'She has only been in the Society full-time for a few years. Before that, she was an understudy with Dr Greene, and she wrote her doctoral thesis on your husband.'

She paused to take another sip.

'Not using his name, of course,' she added. 'She was trying to show ties between childhood abuse, alexithymia and intelligence. In her conclusion, she claimed that overly intelligent alexithymics are more likely to experience dissociative experiences because they are better at constructing believable alternate identities. In her test subject, your husband, she found that there were three completely separate personalities: the host, alter one and alter two. The host, as I am sure you know, is the core personality. He is the intelligent, articulate, manipulative man who is so organised and can think on his feet. Alter one is very violent, has very little emotional capability, and tends to result to physical violence rather than emotional manipulation. Alter two is very childish, a complete opposite to alter one, and is very clingy and dependent. In some situations, he can cycle from one personality to the other without even realising it. I am sure you have seen this?'

'A lot,' Lisa admitted with resignation. 'But I didn't realise it was a problem. I mean, we all have our ups and downs.'

'She determined that if unmedicated and untreated, he would eventually experience a lapse called a dissociative fugue,' Lyna continued. 'She presented her thesis not long after he quit the Society, and she told the patron that if Jackson's disease were not properly diagnosed, when the fugue finally came, if they were keeping a careful eye on him, there was a chance that his fugue could be guided.'

'How would you _guide_ something like that?'

'Well,' Lyna said, leaning forward a bit. 'Dr Millwood tried Ativan, and when that did not work, the patron gave her the command to kill him.'

'What?' Lisa reacted, tipping her head. 'Did you know this?'

'I learned it,' replied Lyna, toeing at some of the papers on the floor. 'Merit was able to provide me with some files I did not have access to. The request came into the Miami office and was forwarded to Dr Greene, who then passed it to Dr Millwood. They left a very messy paper trail.'

'So why didn't they just give up after they didn't kill him?'

'There is no idea of let and let live in our community, Lisa,' Lyna said, reaching out to put her hand on Lisa's knee. 'We have all or nothing, which is why I have found that not only did Poulain approve sending me to aid Keefe, he also approved the plan that Eleni had submitted to Hezbollah.'

'The World Society _planned_ the attack by Hezbollah?' asked Lisa, incredulous. 'Isn't there something in the rules of your society that disallows conflicting assignments?'

'The Society is one huge power struggle,' explained Lyna. 'Poulain is at the top giving everyone commands, and everything depends on his voice being spread to the masses. For many years, he had Anaïs run everything for him, but when the Jackson situation came up, he split his loyalties in half. My team was headed by Anaïs and the Hezbollah team by Dr Eleni Petalas. In the end, my team won, so Eleni was demoted and spent a few years in research. Then, one night, she had a breakthrough and announced it to Poulain. Within a week, Anaïs had killed herself.'

'What kind of breakthrough?'

'Some sort of way to kill you or Jackson, some way to incapacitate you, or perhaps even just a way to set off Jackson's impending dissociative fugue,' Lyna rattled off. 'We have not found much outside of footage from Jackson fighting the blonde woman in the subway station. I have identified her as Major Phoebe Couturier of the United States Air Force. Are you familiar with her?'

'I've heard the name before,' Lisa said, looking pensively. 'She was in Syria with Jackson.'

'Yes, she was part of my team. Upon seeing her in the video, I tried to get in touch with her, but she did not answer. Her friend Dorothy said that Phoebe came home one day, packed all of her things and left without a word. She is now being investigated for desertion.'

'How is she tied to Poulain?'

Lyna shifted in her seat. 'His granddaughter, but I am not completely certain he knows that. Matthias' son participated in a love suicide with his lover and assassin, a Turkish woman named Meryem. What a good number of people didn't know what that Meryem was also the mother of Lucien's only daughter, Phoebe. She was raised all around the Middle East by her mother's family and was actually drafted into the Society because of her skills, not because of family connections.'

'Okay, so you know that Phoebe and Eleni are involved in Jackson's disappearance,' said Lisa slowly. 'So why not go after them to find him?'

Lyna laughed lightly. 'I have been put on the no-fly list.'

Lisa raised her eyebrows. 'The no-fly list. All right, then send someone else.'

'All of us are on the no-fly list,' replied Lyna. 'Me, Merit, all of the people laid off by the Society. Eleni knew what she was doing.'

'You have to be kidding me,' said Lisa with resignation.

'I wish,' Lyna said in a half voice, and for the first time, Lisa saw that her husband's Ukrainian nemesis was fallible. 'I have been doing everything I can, Lisa. I have the places he has been, the places he is most likely going, but unless I can find someone trained to go after them, there is nothing I can do. I am trying to keep track of him, trying to make sure that he is all right, but other than just observation...'

Silence fell over the room, only ambient sounds and the whirring of Lyna's computers passing between the two women. A few moments later, Lyna stood up and walked to Lisa, shoving the papers over some more so she could sit down beside her. She set her hands on her knees as Lisa stared at the wall opposite from them, and Lisa nearly jumped when Lyna's arms went over her shoulders and across her chest to pull her into a hug. It wasn't overly cold, but not like a hug her children or parents would give her, and yet it meant more coming from Lyna than from anyone else.

'I am so sorry,' Lyna said from beside Lisa's head, her glasses pressing into Lisa's hair. 'I wish I could do more for you.'

'Do you...' Lisa started before choking up and putting the back of her hand to her mouth. She closed her eyes for a moment before continuing. 'Do you know if he went with her by choice?'

Again, the silence as Lyna collected her thoughts. 'I do not believe he did. I think your husband is just very unhealthy; his mind is in a bad place.'

Lisa's face crushed and she leaned into Lyna. 'Is there anything I could have done to stop this from happening?'

Lyna's head shook against Lisa's. 'No—Eleni was right, it was inevitable. She may come across as an idiot, but she is one of those secretive geniuses that no one expects. It is her best and worst attribute.'


	10. 7 December 2009

A/N: If any of you like the show House, I've just started a House fic called Occlusion. You can link to it from my profile. Wheeee.

---

'My parents _loved_ each other!' said the sobbing girl standing across from him. In the distance, cars honked and the city basically hummed with activity. On the roof terrace, however, they were effectively shielded from the city at large and instead looked down over a very serene-looking river.

'I knew your parents,' he replied, pausing to take a long drag at his cigarette. 'And they hated each other like I've never seen two people hate one another.'

Her hands clenched into fists and her jaw popped back and forth like it always did when she was angry about something. She stared at him, her eyes welling up with tears. A moment later, one of the tears ran down her face, but she didn't even bother to wipe it away.

'You don't know anything about them,' she said darkly. 'You have no idea what they went through.'

He coughed on a mouthful of smoke. 'What _they_ went through? How about what they put _me_ through? What they put my _wife_ through?'

'You didn't know them!' she yelled so raggedly that her face turned bright red and she coughed immediately afterwards. 'All you think about is yourself, how things affect you!'

'My wife, my children!' he shouted back, slamming his fist on the glass-top table.

'My parents had to give up _everything_ for you!' she said before sobbing, pressing her balled-up hands to her cheeks.

She looked so defenceless at that point that he backed down and instead took a few more slow drags at his cigarette, keeping his eyes on her. Under his gaze, she didn't move.

'What are you talking about?' he asked in a softer voice with a nonchalant look on his face.

For once in her life, she actually didn't seem to want to say something back.

'You brought it up,' he continued, snubbing out the cigarette in the half-full ashtray on the table.

'When you came into the picture, you became the number one priority,' she said after a period of silence. 'Nothing else was to come between you and your education, your mental preparation, everything.'

'Your point?' he replied haughtily, leaning back in his chair.

'My parents had been married for years before you came along. They met in medical school and fell in love, and when dad was recruited by the Society, he was able to get mom involved too. They were in the Society for ten years before mom got pregnant in 1987.'

'I came into your father's care in 1988,' he said, leaning forward and pointing emphatically at her. 'And in 1999, he said that he was _recently_ divorced.'

'Then he lied to you,' she said, tight-lipped. 'Mom and dad lived in Maine in a little city with a clinic and a psychiatric hospital. Mom would go do things in Boston; dad would deal with people who needed therapy in the area. One day, Matthias Poulain called my parents and told them that dad would be needed in Orangeburg for his "special case," but that mom was not supposed to come along. He forced them to file a separation, sent mom down to Cincinnati. When she got there, she found out she was pregnant but couldn't tell dad. He surprised her one night and showed up, and he saw that she was pregnant. They both cried, fell asleep together, and the next morning, he promised that he would come back, that we would all be a family.'

She closed her eyes. 'It wasn't meant to be. He was assigned you full-time and just grew as distant as _you_ are. My mom gave birth to me alone in her apartment in Dayton, didn't even bother trying to contact him about it, never discussed it with him. She didn't even notify the city that I'd been born to avoid a paper trail. Poulain told him that I died at birth, and he just accepted it. Mom kept me until I was almost eight, and when she finally divorced dad, she… she gave me up to a friend.'

He was just watching her silently.

'You didn't know my mom,' said the woman with a sad smile. 'She really loved me, and I think that my dad would have loved me too if he'd had the chance. The reason why she was so hard on you was because she knew if you hadn't come along, we would have been a happy family in some little suburb somewhere. But you came along, Matthias Poulain came along, and now where are we? My mother lost her mind and had a fatal shootout with a bunch of FBI agents. My father lost his mind and raped a woman he didn't know and was harshly beaten to death. Here I am, kinda floating, I have my adoptive mother, but...'

Her voice just drifted off as she looked at the river. He tapped his box of cigarettes on the edge of the table, offering her the box.

'No thanks, I don't smoke.' she said quietly. 'Kills ya, but so does living, right?'

He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. 'Why did your father rape my wife?'

A pause. 'In psychiatry, we find a reason for everything, and trust me, a book could have been written just about my parents. When dad left, mom was just entering the second trimester. He wanted to see her again, to have the entire family together as one in a beautiful, sexual moment, to know that all that was there was his and would forever be his. He wanted to know that he had the ability to bring about that change in her. Mom looked like your wife when she was her age; the grey came after the divorce. Curly hair, soft face, just... kind. In his mind, your wife was mom. Someone even told me that he called your wife by his play name for mom.'

He thought back as the smoke drifted about his head. 'Sunshine.'

'Sunshine.'

His eyes snapped open and he shoved forward with a start. Blinking quickly, he tried to make sense of his surroundings. It was cold and loud, the seat under him was very hard, and it smelled faintly of urine. Bright fluorescent lighting was overhead behind a grate.

'Man, what did you say to me?'

All at once, he realised that there was a large man looking down at him menacingly. Looking across and seeing a subway map, he blinked a couple more times until he managed to come up with something. 'Which... which line are we on?'

'L to 14th,' he replied roughly. 'You from out of town?'

'I'm not completely sure,' he responded, digging into his pocket. He hissed, withdrawing his hand quickly and looking silently at the long gash he'd just created across his palm.

'What the fuck, man?'

The man and his associates moved down a couple of seats as Jackson stood up, never taking his eyes off his hand. It was in this stance that he alighted the train and walked to the opening of the station, in this way that he let his feet take him to Horatio Street, and before he knew it, he was standing in front of a very familiar building. Dropping his hands to his sides, he looked up at the top floors to see half-light. Stepping up the outside steps, he pushed the button for the doorman, and when the old man finally came, he looked as though he'd seen a ghost. With shaking hands, he pushed open the door and looked up at the other man soundlessly. As Jackson walked to the elevator, the man just stood slack-jawed.

'Sir, I don't have a key,' Jackson said smoothly, giving the doorman a smile.

'A key? Key...' he said, shuffling over to the office. 'Mr Rippner, is Miss Lisa expecting you?'

_Lisa. Lisa Rippner_. The name reverberated in his mind. _Lisa,_ long dark curls, smiling, a few scars, green eyes, loving, pregnant. Crédit Suisse, Jonathan, Hediyeh… Christmas lights?

'Why are there Christmas lights in here?' he asked, just noticing the decor. 'Did you put these up after I left for the office?'

'It's only a couple weeks until Christmas, sir,' the man replied, handing him an elevator key. 'I…'

The man paused before shaking his head and walking off. Jackson watched after him for a moment before taking the card and sliding it to allow him access to the floor. It was dark, very dark, and although his watch was dead, he figured his wife would be in bed by this point. Taking the lift to the top floor, he got out and walked slowly to the bathroom, automatically retrieving the first aid kit and pouring hydrogen peroxide over the cut before taping gauze down to soak up the remainder of the blood. Turning, he walked down to the end of the hallway, sliding open the door to the bedroom as quietly as possible. As he walked around the side of the bed, he peeled off clothing, dropping his jacket on the floor, his tie on the chair, his belt also on the chair, his slacks on the floor, his shirt thrown atop the lamp. Dressed in his undershirt, boxers and socks, he carefully slid into bed next to his wife, pulling his arms around her and relaxing for only a moment because he suddenly realised his arms could no longer fit all the way around her. Lifting the duvet, he looked at her stomach and rubbed it softly, trying to figure out how whilst he was at work, she managed to more than double the size of their infants in her womb.

And, as he held the duvet up, he heard a crinkling as something jumped onto the bed and then the pressure of little feet on his legs. Lifting his head a bit, he looked down to see a large white cat staring back at him. He raised his eyebrows.

'... _Alfie_? When did you—'

Apparently, he held the duvet for too long or spoke too loudly, because she curled up as a chill went down her back. A moment later, she half-opened her eyes, smiling a bit at the illusion beside her, reaching out to touch his face and suddenly realising that her husband was _actually_ in bed with her. She sat up quickly with a gasp, tears immediately falling down her face.

'Are you real?' she asked in a choked voice. 'Is it really you?'

He gave her a little, uncomfortable smile with his eyebrows knit. 'Yeah, who else would it be, Leese?'

Immediately, her hands dropped down to her stomach. Wrapping her arms around herself, she leaned forward and started sobbing, rocking herself back and forth. After an awkward moment, he put his arms around her and steadied her, kissing the top of her head.

'Leese, it's all right, calm down,' he said uncertainly into her hair. 'It was just a dream.'

'Oh my God,' came a voice from the door, and Jackson looked up to see Carol Bellamy standing there. 'Jackson, just... oh my God.'

'What is everyone—' he started, but Carol had already run back down the stairs, Alfie jumping down to follow right behind her.

'Where have you been?' Lisa managed to gasp between sobs. 'Oh God, Jackson, where have you been?'

'At... work?' he eked out.

Lisa looked up at him, putting a hand on the side of his face. 'Jackson, don't you know how long you've been gone?'

'Since this morning,' he answered confidently. 'I kissed you, rubbed your stomach, which...' he put both hands on it 'seems to have grown exponentially since I left.'

'You've been gone for more than four months,' she said to him, holding the sides of his face as she whispered. 'Four months. No calls, no anything, you just... disappeared. Lyna has been able to track you a little but she... she couldn't do anything.'

Jackson stared at her for a few moments before breaking down in laughter. 'Right, Lisa, what did you do? Is that padding?'

He rolled her shirt up to look at her stretch-marked skin. Carefully running his hands down her stomach, he felt the butterfly kicks of one of the twins and just sat in stunned silence. Her hands came down to rest atop his, pressing them down harder so that Jackson could feel each little flutter.

'Lisa... what happened?' he asked, almost too quietly for her to hear.

'You left,' she said, reaching up again to run her fingers through his hair. 'You left, and we lost you. We couldn't catch you. They wouldn't let us catch you.'

'I don't... I don't remember anything after leaving for work.'

He pulled his hands out from under her one hand, reaching up to hold his face, his eyes scrunched together.

'I had a dream about... Augustine... and woke up on the subway and came home.'

'Jackson,' said Lisa, running her hands down his front. 'Honey, you have blood all over you.'

Jumping up and away from her, he caught his reflection in the glass windows surrounding the room. Down his entire front, there was sticky blood. How he didn't notice it, he had no idea, but as he began to look around the room, he realised it was also on his shirt, his tie, his pants... the only thing spared was his heavy coat by the door.

By this point, the entire house had woken up. Jonathan and Hediyeh stood in stunned silence by Carol and Joe, and Augustine simply slipped forward to check and make sure there wasn't any injury that was causing all the blood on him.

'It's not your blood,' she said softly. 'It belongs to someone else. You don't have any injuries.'

'Who did I—' he started before looking over at the children. Jonathan was looking at him and sucking his thumb, but Hediyeh refused to make eye contact as she held Alfie, burying her face in the cat's fur. 'Lisa, get me something to change into.'

'I'll get it for you,' Augustine replied quickly before Lisa could even move. 'Jackson, she's been ordered bed rest since you've been gone. You two have _big_ babies.'

Jackson looked back at his wife, who just shrugged as she slipped down to lie down again. 'Why don't I remember being gone?'

As Augustine handed him a pile of pyjamas, she gave him a piteous look. 'I tried to catch you when I saw it happening, but you moved too quickly. You had a dissociative fugue and wandered off.'

'Where? Where did I wander off to?'

'Lyna's been trying to track your movements by mapping the kills you've done, but she wasn't able to catch you because, well, she's on the no-fly list,' she said, but he didn't look happy with that answer. 'Russia, South Africa, the Gambia, China, Thailand, New Zealand, Colombia... Christ, you've been so many places, I can't keep track.'

'How did I get back here?' he asked, crazy-eyed.

'Hey, kids, let's let Daddy and Gisa talk this over, okay?' said Carol softly, taking Hediyeh by the shoulders and leading her out.

After the children left, Augustine closed the door behind them and pulled the blinds. The tall twenty-year-old stood with her back pressed against the wall, trying to avoid watching the very unmodest Jackson change into clean pyjamas. He climbed into bed, sitting on his knees next to his wife and looking solemnly at her stomach.

'I missed it again,' he said softly. 'Right when you needed me, I wasn't here.'

'Don't think about it that way,' Lisa said a bit sternly. 'Now we know the problem and we can get help, okay? We can make sure this doesn't happen again.'

He was silent for a few minutes, so Augustine took this moment to walk over and pull a chair next to the bed. Jackson leaned back onto the pillows next to his wife before turning and laying his head on her stomach. A moment later, Lisa started running her hands through his quite mussed hair.

'You can't remember anything?' asked Augustine.

'Nothing,' he said, closing his eyes. 'Like I said, I remember leaving for work, and then nothing. Not until I just woke up on the train.'

'Where was the train coming from?'

'It was the L coming here.'

'Do you have your MetroCard?'

He thought for a moment. 'It's probably in my pants, or in the coat pocket.'

After looking around for a moment, Augustine turned and took his coat from by the door. Picking it up, she'd already started digging through the pockets when the smell of the coat hit her. She expected the coppery smell of blood that was all over his other clothing, but instead, she was greeted by the smell of cloves. Immediately, she froze in place before pulling the coat closer to her nose and taking a deep whiff of it.

'What are you doing?' asked Lisa with a raised eyebrow before Jackson had a chance to ask.

'You probably won't remember, but Jackson, when did you start smoking clove cigarettes?' she asked, holding up the coat questioningly.

'Clove cigarettes?' he repeated before smacking his mouth. He didn't taste anything specific, not even the normal, faint flavour following a cigarette and gum. 'I don't think...'

Augustine held the coat to her nose again before walking over and throwing it atop him. He took it and pulled it toward him, taking a deep smell of it before closing his eyes.

'Nitsa,' he murmured, his eyebrows knit.

'Nitsa?' asked Augustine, reaching out to take the coat from him, but he held onto it tenaciously. 'What's a nitsa?'

'_Who_ is a Nitsa,' Jackson replied in a dazed voice, still holding onto the coat with his nose pressed to the wool. 'My assistant.'

'Jackson, you don't have an assistant named Nitsa,' said Lisa, pausing her fingers in his hair to tug at it a little.

'No, let him go on,' Augustine muttered. 'Do you remember anything about Nitsa?'

His eyes opened and he focused on Augustine. 'All I can remember is a woman's voice.'

'Nitsa's voice?'

'No,' he replied quickly, rolling his eyes back in thought. 'She has to have been a flight attendant.'

'A flight attendant on a flight to _where_?' Augustine asked imploringly, dropping down to her knees and putting her hands on his.

'I don't...' he replied quietly, drifting off. A moment later, he spoke again. '_Bonjour Mesdames, bonjour Messieurs. La Compagnie Air France, le Commandant Couturier et son équipage vous souhaitent la bienvenue à bord du vol à destination final de Genève. Nous allons décoller dans quelques instants; veuillez attacher vos ceintures et éteindre vos cigarettes._'

'Air France? No, we checked their flight—'

She didn't even have time to finish before he continued. _'Nous vous rappelons qu'il est strictement interdit de fumer dans les toilettes. Notre appareil Gulfstream 550 volera à une altitude de 13 016 mètres, et l'atterrissage est prévu pour 18 heures sur l'Aéroport International de Genève. Nous vous prions maintenant de redresser le dossier de votre siège, de remettre en position droite la tablette devant vous, et de vous préparer au départ._'

'Gulfstream,' said Lisa suddenly, picking out one of the only familiar words in her husband's stream of conscious French ramble. 'Why was he on a Gulfstream?'

There was a pregnant pause during which Augustine's face turned bright red. 'What's a Gulfstream?'

Lisa gave her an odd look. 'It's a private jet.'

There was yet another pause before Augustine got to her feet, pried the coat from Jackson's hands and walked towards the door, a blank look on her face. 'I need to go find Lyna. Stay here with Jackson and make sure he doesn't wander off.'

Lisa reached down and put her hand squarely on Jackson's chest. 'He'll go absolutely nowhere.'

He smiled lightly with his eyes still closed, bending his arm to put his hand atop her own. The door clicked shut as Augustine left, and after a few minutes, Lisa turned her hand to squeeze his.

'Hey, let's try to get some sleep, okay?'

He nodded and with a grunt, sat up a bit and rolled back to his place, setting his head on his pillow and waiting for Lisa to get comfortable. It was a much longer process than usual, he realised with a bit of humour, but once she settled on her side with her back to him, he happily nuzzled right up next to her, throwing his arm over her waist. Rubbing at her stomach, he kissed her neck and furrowed his brow when she started crying.

'Leese?'

'Hormones,' she said with a little laugh before becoming serious. 'You can't imagine how much I missed you and how happy I am that you're home.'

He didn't even respond, instead pressing his nose to the back of her neck and just concentrating on her breathing as he drifted off to sleep.

---

'Do you need me to get you anything, Christian?'

He slowly opened his eyes, trying to focus on the source of the voice, but all he could see was a beige and red blur.

'Let him alone, my dear,' came a quite familiar voice, and he turned his head to look at the blurry man sitting across from him. 'Go back to sleep—we'll wake you when we get back home to Geneva.'

'Why is everything blurry?' he asked, rubbing his eyes.

'You have his glasses, Matthias.'

The cloudy shape in front of him moved around before leaning forward and slipping glasses onto his face. He blinked a couple of times to wet his eyes before looking about the cabin of the private jet. There were two other passengers besides him, a stewardess sitting in a front seat wearing a tailored suit, and the female pilot and male co-pilot with the door open between them and the cabin. The man sitting across from him looked familiar, but he couldn't quite place him, and the woman to his left didn't bring up any sensation or memory. It wasn't that she wasn't pretty—in fact, she was moderately beautiful—but as much as she acted like she knew him, he didn't feel like he knew her at all.

He stared straight at her for a minute or so. 'Who are you?'

'Matthias!' she said, knitting her brow and looking at the old man.

'Nitsy dearest, you've studied this before,' he said smoothly. 'He probably won't remember anything. We've found him now, that's all that matters.'

The woman looked at him, tipping her head to the side and reaching out to rub the side of his stubbly face. 'I'm your Nitsa.'

'What's a nitsa?' he asked, looking between the woman and the other man.

'Her _name_ is Nitsa, my boy. Your assistant and doctor,' the old man said with a smile before he coughed heartily. 'Don't worry; it will all come back to you. Just go back to sleep.'

He turned onto his side again, looking at the woman across from him. She had long, straight blonde hair, but it looked very much like her hair was naturally wavy and dark considering the sort of frizzy texture of the hair. She was wearing a very conservative suit, pantyhose and quite tall high heels, so he could only see her hands and face, but both were olive toned. She wore too much make-up, he thought, but he also thought she had a very interesting face. He had a vague memory from an unknown time where a nameless redhead discussed women used by plastic surgeons to show students perfect faces, and he had a feeling that this woman's face could be used. Something just seemed very balanced about it, from her almond shaped, almond coloured eyes to her full lips.

She chattered to the old man, but every word was a blur to him as a headache suddenly stabbed into his temple. Moaning, he pressed his head to the seat, the arms of his glasses digging into his face. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard the one called Nitsa demanding that the stewardess turn down the lights, and they were soon bathed in darkness. It didn't help his headache, but a few moments later, he felt a hand on the back of his head.

'Can you look at me?' she murmured, reaching under his chin and lightly pulling his face from the leather.

He looked at her almost drunkenly, his eyes refusing to focus. She brushed his hair back and for a moment, he could swear he smelled fresh soap and felt soft skin. In the darkness, her hair looked brunette, and he felt at ease remembering a comforting brown-haired woman.

'Put this under your tongue—it will help,' she said, pressing a chalky pill against his lips.

He unwillingly opened his mouth and she slipped the pill in, closing his mouth after she did so. Smiling, she kissed him lightly on the lips and reached up to take off his glasses. He relaxed as the pill melted below his tongue, quickly taking away his nausea and at least the edge of the headache. As he was able to concentrate on something other than pain and confusion, he found himself taking in the sounds and smells around him.

Without looking at the woman, he spoke to her. 'You smell different. Did you change your perfume?'

She didn't directly answer him, instead muttering something to the old man, who responded affirmatively before coughing again.

'Good night, dearest,' she said into his ear before the harsh odour of rubbing alcohol hit his nose. He scrunched it up before feeling a tiny prick on his upper arm, and a moment later, an immense exhaustion came over him.

The last thing he remembered was a blanket pulled over his shoulder and the old man speaking.

'This is going very well.'

Jackson shot up in bed, breathing hard as the alarm next to Lisa's head started blaring. Staring at the duvet cover, he tried to calm his breathing before shaking his head and then pressing his hand against it, his eyebrows knit. As he took a deep breath, Alfie stood up from Lisa's legs and walked over, rubbing her face against Jackson's. He blinked quickly as his wife stirred next to him, making a happy little moaning sound before stretching her arms then slowly propping herself up to lean over and kiss him, scratching Alfie's head.

'Good morning,' she said sleepily before laying her head on his shoulder. 'Wanna help me with my morning toilette?'

He stayed in shock for a few more seconds before closing his eyes, swallowing, then turning his head to her. 'Why don't we take a bath? Go ahead and go in there and start the water, and I'll come in after I write some things down.'

She looked at him for a moment before smiling sleepily. 'Kay.'

Carefully shifting over, she dropped her legs over the side of the bed, took another long stretch, then shoved herself up with one hand on the bed and the other under her stomach. As she hobbled towards the door and down the hall to the bathroom, Jackson felt himself suddenly plagued with something akin to guilt as he realised that he hadn't been here for the one of the biggest transitions in her pregnancy. She'd been showing pretty well last he remembered, but now she seemed so large that her entire centre of gravity was thrown off, and she even had a good amount of time left before the birth. Her hands were pressed around her lumbar spine, supporting her as she walked slowly, and it took him a few seconds to stop his deep thinking after she disappeared into the bathroom.

Looking around, he sprawled across the bed, opening the drawer on Lisa's nightstand and grabbing a pad of paper and a pen. Sitting back up, he took the pad into his lap and stared at the blank page for a second before scrawling furiously. It looked nothing like his normal handwriting, he realised with a bit of a start, and paused for a moment to look at his hands. Slowly shifting the pen from his left to right hand, he furrowed his brow and closed his eyes for a moment, but didn't let all this interrupt his chain of thought. The paper was soon filled with keywords and phrases: Christian; Nitsa; Matthias; blonde-haired, brown-eyed woman who smelled of cloves and spoke slowly; home in Geneva; harsh coughing; rubbing alcohol and an injection. After a long moment of staring at the jumble of words, he set the pad over to the side and got up from the bed slowly, following Lisa's footsteps to the bathroom.


	11. Morning, 10 December 2009

A/N: There are seriously at least five or six people on death watch (or comfort care, if you want to be politically correct, phbt) at work. The full moon's coming up, and I bet that some of them will die around the full moon simply because Jesus, the full moon makes everyone CRAZY. CRAAAAAZY.

---

'He just seems distracted,' came Joe's voice over the staticy cell phone connection.

'What do you mean by "distracted?"'

'Distracted means that a person is unable to concentrate on—'

'I know the meaning of the word,' Lyna spat back. 'I mean, what is he doing that lets you know he is distracted?'

'He just...' there was a long pause, and Lyna had the feeling he was looking at Jackson. '... isn't right.'

She rolled her eyes, licking her teeth. 'Nothing has ever been right about him.'

'Even_ less_ right,' Joe said with resignation.

'Have you ever taken sleeping pills?' she asked, seemingly changing the topic.

'Yes,' he said. 'But I don't know—'

'Have you ever taken a sleeping pill and then the next morning, found that you had done things that you do not remember?'

Joe hesitated. 'Except for him, it's not a half hour, it's four months.'

'You are learning!' she said with a shoulder shrug. 'He has always been a weak link, so I would not be surprised if he is feeling so guilty for leaving.'

There was the sound of Joe opening his mouth to snap something back, but instead, he just cleared his throat uncomfortably. 'My ex-wife wants to start therapy with him.'

'Your choice,' Lyna replied. 'Usually the course of action is to give medication, but if Jackson is willing to talk, you might as well try.'

'You've been very helpful the last few months.'

Lyna's face scrunched into a distasteful look. 'It is a thank you to Lisa for taking Jackson off my hands.'

Joe openly laughed. 'I'll talk to you later.'

Lyna dropped the phone onto her living room table. It clunked against some papers and rolled off onto the carpeted floor, and for a moment she stared at it. Taking a long breath, she rolled her eyes, took off her glasses, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She tipped her head back to look at the ceiling before untying her hair and standing up, running her fingers through its length as she walked to the bathroom to take a shower. After all, she had to go see Jackson Rippner, and he'd never seen her in a state other than perfect.

---

It basically looked like any of the marriage counselling she'd ever done. The husband and wife always sat across from her on the couch, both of them trying to put forward a good face by holding hands, but one of them was always distracted, usually the husband. He'd be holding her hand and looking out the window, and the wife would be looking straight at her. It was like some sort of solo therapy with a grunting dummy sitting next to an attentive woman. This time, however, since it was her daughter and son-in-law, it was a little more than disconcerting. In addition, rather than looking blankly out the window, he was engaging in some PDA with her daughter's neck.

'Jackson,' Carol said quietly as she tapped on her clipboard.

The grunting response was at least normal.

'Jackson, come on,' muttered a red-faced Lisa, squeezing his hand. She had a look on her face like her mother had just caught her topless with her prom date, still playing the teenager even though she'd been married for nearly four years and was very heavily pregnant—a double virgin conception, she apparently wished her mother to believe.

Jackson laid his head on Lisa's shoulder, looking with half-closed eyes at Carol.

Carol bent her head down to look at him questioningly. 'Has he had any medications this morning?'

Lisa twisted with some difficulty and reached over to brush Jackson's hair out of his eyes as she shook her head. 'He hasn't taken any medications since he got home, but he's been having a hard time sleeping, hasn't been eating much, has had bad headaches, and I think this is probably the longest he's stayed in one place for the last few days.'

'Jackson?' asked Carol, trying to get his attention by reaching out and tapping his knee with the end of her pen. 'Jackson, have you ever experienced withdrawal before?'

He just took a deep breath.

'Okay,' said Carol, her shoulders slumping. 'When he sleeps, have you noticed anything different?'

'Well, I think he's been having nightmares,' said Lisa, tipping her head to lie atop his. 'So he doesn't sleep soundly at all. He jerks around, sweats, his heart races... I feel so bad for him.'

Carol nodded, looking up at her ex-husband, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed over his chest. 'Lisa, think that Jackson might be going through withdrawal, and considering his memory problems, I think it might be a Valium dependency. I'd like to go ahead and prescribe him some diazepam to get his levels back up so that we can wean him slowly.'

'Give me the script and I'll go pick it up,' said Joe, walking over and holding his hand out.

Carol scratched down the prescription information: diazepam 5mg, two tablets every six hours for the first twenty-four hours, then moving down to one tablet every twelve hours for the three weeks following or until the withdrawal symptoms begin to alleviate, no refills. Signing it messily, she ripped it off of her prescription pad and handed it to Joe.

'Tell the pharmacist that we need that as soon as possible. He's been home for a few days, and the withdrawal gets worse and worse with each passing day, especially around day five, and I don't want him to get to that point.'

Joe took the script from her and looked down at it for a moment before checking his watch and walking to the elevator to head on to Duane Reade. Everything was quiet until the doors of the lift slid closed after him.

'Now you have to make sure he takes the Valium when he needs to,' said Carol sternly. 'I cannot express to you how important this is. Some of the withdrawals from the medication can lead to horrible seizures, and I think we'd all like to avoid that.'

Pressing her hand over Jackson's ear, she looked at her mother with wide eyes. 'Will giving him the medication make him less clingy?'

'I heard that,' Jackson said slowly.

'At first, he's going to be more interested in sleeping than doing anything, including being around you,' Carol replied with a smile. 'Then he should go back to his normal self.'

'Which is... what?' asked Lisa immediately without even thinking. 'I—I mean...'

'Since Lyna brought me Jackson's files, I've been able to go over all of his medical records and have seen a pattern in his doctors' reports,' said Carol. 'His case report has all indications that he's had the symptoms of dissociative identity disorder for a number of years with two alters, or alternate personalities, and his normal host identity. One alter is very cold, the other alter is overly affectionate, and the host is a sort of middle-of-the-road type.'

Lisa squeezed her eyes shut and put her hand over them, rubbing over her eyebrows. 'I've already heard this. What are we supposed to do about it?'

'The big aim in treatment is to integrate the personalities,' Carol replied, leaning forward. 'But honey, I can't do that. You're going to need to find someone who specialises in this disorder. I've been doing general psych for so long, I'm not equipped to handle a specific disorder, especially not something like this.'

It was at that moment that, fortuitously, the elevator door opened and Augustine walked in, sipping on a to-go cup of chai tea as she shifted the bag on her shoulder. She was about to just walk by them and go upstairs, but when Carol called out her name, she stopped and jumped.

'Yes?' she asked, flustered, as she flicked drops of chai off of her argyle sweater.

'You worked in the psychiatric intensive care unit at Bellevue, right?'

'Yeah,' she said before taking a sip of the tea again.

'Do you have any idea if there's a specialist in DID there?'

'Uh-huh,' she grunted from behind the cup. She swallowed the sip. 'Dr Masterson. He's one of the attendings.'

'I don't want to see a psychiatrist,' Jackson muttered, and Lisa pinched his thigh.

'Too fucking bad,' she growled before reaching up and shoving his head off of her shoulder. 'You're going and seeing someone about this, and we're going to end this stupid shit! Do you know what it would have been like here if Augustine hadn't quit her job to come help me or—or if Daddy hadn't come to live up here with us? If Mom hadn't flown from Dallas to here a dozen times? You were gone for _four months_. You know what would happen if you decided to up and do that again? _I would have to give birth without you here_!'

Jackson suddenly seemed more awake, though not much, and just stared at his red-faced wife as angry tears ran down her face. A moment later, he turned to look past Carol and just slowly fell to the side, resting his face on the arm of the couch because his wife certainly wasn't going to offer up her shoulder again.

'Nitsa always let me lean against her,' he said quietly as he continued staring into the distance.

'What?' asked Lisa, her voice constricted.

Jackson had obviously drifted off into his own little world again, because he didn't answer, instead just sitting there with one hand halfway cast on his lap and the other laying beside him on the couch.

'Did he pass out?' asked Augustine, still standing near the elevator with the tea held awkwardly in both hands.

'I don't think so...' murmured Carol, leaning to the side to try to look at his eyes. 'I think he's just... I don't know. Catatonic.'

Lisa's hands were held in tight fists in her lap, and she looked down at them for a second before letting out a little puffing sigh and shoving herself up. She used the other arm of the couch to support herself, pushing her mother away when she tried to help her balance herself.

'I'll be upstairs,' she said with a strained smile, tears still running down her face. 'When he comes to, you can tell him he can just stay there on the couch.'

Putting both hands on her back, she walked to the stairs and started up them, putting both feet on each step as she went. The whole room seemed in stasis, Carol standing in front of the couch with her arms still awkwardly held out and Augustine paused with her tea perched on her lip. A few minutes of pure silence passed, Augustine finally looking over at Carol uncomfortably.

'Should one of us...'

The elevator dinged and slipped open, revealing a breathless Joe Reisert holding out a bright orange bottle. 'The pharmacist immediately—where's Lisa?'

Carol didn't answer, so Augustine turned around to him. 'Jackson upset her, so she went upstairs.'

'And no one...?' started Joe before walking over, dropping the pill bottle in his ex-wife's hand, and starting up the stairs. 'Lisa!'

Clutching the bottle, Carol looked down at it before looking back up at Jackson, who was in the same position on the couch. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

'Augustine, get some water for him.'

'He can have some of my tea,' the younger woman offered, holding up her cup.

'Water, Augustine,' snapped Carol, pressing her other hand to her forehead.

With an immature little huff, Augustine strode over and tapped her cup down on the granite countertop before throwing open a cabinet and retrieving a glass. After going to the refrigerator, she shoved the glass against the water dispenser, watching it fill with down-turned eyebrows. She spun on her heel and walked back over to Carol, slamming the glass down on the table before ripping the bottle from her hands and turning to Jackson, hands on her hips.

'Sit up, you ass!' she growled at him.

He didn't respond, so she bent over and grabbed him by the shoulders, ripping him up so forcefully that his head snapped to the side. Because his head lolled to the side, she thought for a moment that he'd actually passed out, but then his eyes moved to avoid her glare. She pinched her lips, popping her jaw back and forth as she took her hands from his shoulders and opened the bottle of Valium.

'Open your mouth,' she spat.

In response, he tightened his jaw muscles. Only a moment later, Carol dove in and grabbed his face, forcing her thumb, index finger and middle finger onto his cheeks and harshly against his teeth. He managed to hold his mouth shut for a few seconds, but she just squeezed harder until he finally opened his mouth no more than a couple of inches. Augustine shoved the pill into his mouth and he immediately stuck out his tongue, blowing out a puff of air to send the pill onto the floor.

Not surprisingly, both women immediately snapped. Carol let go of his face, clearing the area just before Augustine grabbed the front of his t-shirt and pulled him onto the floor, straddling his chest as she spilled the contents of the pill bottle onto the glass table.

'I don't care if I have to drown you,' she said breathily. 'You're going to have this pill!'

Jackson came to life, his eyes suddenly focusing on her. Scrunching his nose up, he threw his arms from the floor to her thighs, digging his fingers into them.

'You'll have to do a lot more than that,' she hissed, looking incredibly like her mother as she leaned in, shoving back his head.

'Can do,' he struggled to say, his voice rumbling against her hand.

Twisting a bit, he was able to send his knee into her back, but Augustine was obviously impervious to that move. She just grabbed him harder, her fingers digging into his lymph nodes as she tipped her head to the side, a little smile on her face as she looked at him clinically. He growled, trying to turn under her.

'No, you can't,' she replied quite calmly, taking her other hand grabbing a pillow from the couch. In a flash, she pressed it down on his face.

He buckled under her, but she kept a completely emotionless face, squeezing her legs harder against him as he gripped at her scrubs. She tipped her head back, her eyebrows raised, as she dropped most of her weight against the pillow. His movements became slower, and eventually his hands went limp against her, one falling to the floor. After a few more seconds, she lifted the pillow from his face and threw it away from her before dropping to put a hand on each side of his face. He didn't try to attack her again, so she sighed deeply before pushing herself up and falling back on the couch, closing her eyes. Carol just stared at her.

'Is that what they teach you in nursing school now?'

Augustine opened her eyes and turned her head to look at Carol dryly. 'That was taught to me by my mother the night before Child Protective Services took me away. I woke up, she was trying to asphyxiate me with a pillow, I passed out, and I woke up in a new home. I learned that there's a certain amount of time that you can deprive someone of oxygen before actually causing real physical damage.'

She ran her fingers shakily through her hair, swallowing audibly as she closed her eyes again.

'Why don't you go pick up the phone and call the Manhattan Psychiatric Centre before he wakes up?'

Carol's face softened immensely and she walked over to the counter, picking up the phone and then looking over at the back of the younger woman's head. 'Do you know the telephone number?'

'646-672-6767,' Augustine rattled off. 'Ask to have your call transferred to the STAIR Unit.'


	12. Late Morning, 10 December 2009

'Leese, honey?'

'I don't want to talk, Dad,' came a sniffling voice from inside the dark bedroom.

Looking in, Joe couldn't see a form in the bed, so he stepped in, quietly closing the door behind him. He took a few hesitant steps forward, looking for his daughter only to find her on the floor beside the bed, Alfie held tightly to her chest. He bent down to her, immediately putting his arms around her shoulders.

'Dad,' she cried, trying to pull away from him as she let the cat go.

'Leese, just calm down. We're going to work this all out,' he said reassuringly. 'Let me help you up into bed and—'

'I'm so sick of this!' Lisa gasped, sobbing against her father's arm. 'I'm clumsy, everyone has to help me with everything, and I thought that Jackson would be here to support me, but instead he's sitting on the couch talking about how some other woman lets him do things he wants to do!'

He didn't have any response other than to just hold her closer. She grabbed the other side of his arm with both hands, pressing her face into his shirt as far as she could.

'I feel like an invalid,' she said. 'When I was pregnant with Jonathan, I was still able to do basically everything, but this time—'

'You're having twins,' her father finished, smiling against her hair. 'I know it's stressful, Leese, but you just have to just go along with the flow of things right now and trust that we'll all work out everything for you. You have a lot of people supporting you even if Jackson isn't all here.'

'I love him, Daddy, even when he's like this,' she sniffled, looking up at him with her nose still pressed to his arm.

'I know you do,' he said squeezing her tighter.

He just held her for a minute or so until her breathing returned to normal.

'Now that you've calmed down a little, why are you on the floor?'

She pressed her face back down into his arm with a little laugh. 'I tripped on the rug.'

Joe tensed, trying to scan over her to see if she had any apparent injuries. 'Are you hurt?'

'I hurt all over,' she admitted. 'But I hurt before falling. My back has been giving me trouble, not surprisingly.'

'One of the reasons your doctor has recommended bed rest. Now come on,' he said, lifting her up from under her armpits. She leaned against him, her head on his chest with her stomach awkwardly situated between the two of them. 'Okay, now lay back.'

She fell straight back, her legs still hanging off of the bed. Although he knew she hated it, Joe reached out and rubbed her stomach softly, smiling as he felt his next grandchildren flutter beneath his touch. A moment later, he put his arms under her legs and turned her onto the bed. Groaning, she held her stomach and turned onto her side so that she could face him as he sat in the chair across from her place. She got comfortable, laying her elbow in the curve of her waist as she reached out and rubbed her stomach. Joe pulled the chair right up beside her, propping his legs on the bed.

'Do you want to talk now?'

'I think I got it all off my chest,' she replied, smiling down at her stomach. 'And I think these two aren't going to give me the end of it for yelling at their daddy.'

'They have to be happier than they were when he was gone.'

'I think so,' Lisa smiled. 'Now if they'd show their love for all of us by descending ever so slightly and being born, that would be fabulous.'

'You're at twenty eight weeks,' he said back with a laugh. 'Let's try to at least make it another ten weeks, okay?'

Lisa groaned but then grew quiet, listening to the mêlée going on two floors down. After a few seconds, she looked at her father. 'What are we going to do with him?'

'You want me to go ask Augustine and your mom?'

She shook her head. 'Stay here with me, Daddy. I want some company. It's very lonely in bed, even when Jackson's in here.'

He smiled at her sadly, reaching out to rub her face with the back of his fingers. 'I'm so proud of you, Leese.'

'Da-ad,' she said, rolling her eyes.

'You realise most people would have given up now, right?' he asked. 'No one would put up with this like you have. And being able to move beyond the rape like you have, to be able to give us grandchildren, it's incredible. There's no way your mom and I could be any more proud of you than we already are.'

Even in the dark, he could see her blushing as she pressed her face into the pillow. With a contented sigh, Joe leaned back in the chair, smiling as a loudly purring Alfie jumped up into his lap. They sat in the quiet for several minutes, just listening to Alfie purr, but both of them tensed when there was the sound of someone running up the stairs, Lisa squeezing her eyes shut and covering her face with her pillow when the door was thrown open.

'Lisa, Joe, the ambulance is here to take Jackson to Manhattan Psychiatric,' said Augustine softly, holding on to the door handle. 'You guys just stay here and we'll take care of admitting him.'

'No,' Lisa said, her voice muffled by the pillow. 'Let me throw something on and come with you.'

'Lisa, you need to stay in bed,' Augustine said in a pleading voice, leaning forward. 'You've already had enough stress today.'

But Lisa was already sitting up. Her father got up, putting his hands under her arms and helping her off of the bed. She took a deep breath, leaning back to stretch her abdomen and pop her back. When she straightened up, her father was holding out a sweater for her to put on over her drawstring pants and t-shirt. She pulled it over her head and down over her stomach, smiling at her dad when she finished. He put his arm around her waist, guiding her over towards Augustine, who held the door open for them.

'They were putting him on the gurney when I was down there,' Augustine said, walking over to the elevator. 'They're waiting for me though, so they shouldn't have left yet...'

The elevator ride was tense as Augustine tapped her foot and watched the dial as they descended to the lobby. Once there, they watched the EMTs wheel the gurney with Jackson down the front steps toward the ambulance. Augustine ran after them, leaving Joe and Lisa in the lobby as she went to talk to the EMTs and Carol. Father and daughter stood just inside the doors, watching as Augustine explained something to the EMTs, pointing toward Lisa before walking back up the stairs and opening the door.

'Okay, Lisa can go in the ambulance, and the rest of us will follow in the car,' Augustine explained, taking Lisa's arm and leading her down the stairs. 'They brought IM haloperidol and already gave it to him, so he's probably a little woozy right now, but at least he's not violent.'

'Yeah,' said Lisa half-heartedly as the EMTs lifted her up into the ambulance next to Jackson. They closed the doors behind her and she sat down, looking at her husband as he stared up at the ceiling of the vehicle. 'Hey Jackson.'

He was strapped down at eight points: his wrists, his chest, his waist, his upper legs and ankles. Blinking slowly, he turned his head to look at Lisa, trying to reach over to her. With a smile and a tip of the head, she took his hand and leaned to the side, rubbing his cheek with the back of her knuckles. He watched her as the ambulance began to move, but once they sped up, his eyes closed and he began to give in to the haloperidol. His breathing evened out and he pressed against her hand.

'Leese?'

'Hm?' she replied, biting her bottom lip.

His eyes opened again and she saw that dark focus that she hadn't seen in years. 'This isn't over.'

'What?' she asked, dropping his hand, but in response, he just closed his eyes.

---

The Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital sat on its own little island between Manhattan and Queens. The facility was high security, the fences around it covered in coiled barbed wire. Not much else rose up on Ward's Island other than the Centre, and all around it was a state park. Augustine sat in the back seat of the Rippners' Audi Q7, leaning against the back of the seat Carol sat in. They were caught in traffic, not being able to siren their way through the streets. The car was now stopped in front of the Museum of Natural Sciences, and Augustine had her face pressed against the glass to look at Central Park.

'Gisa,' said Carol, using the new nickname she'd chosen. 'I'm sorry about getting snappy with you earlier.'

'You didn't know,' she replied with a smile.

'You probably don't want to, but—'

'Yeah,' Augustine said, still looking out the window. 'I was born in Ohio, but I went anywhere mom was sent. She was based in Geneva for a good chunk of time, like for six years after I was born. I grew up thinking I was Swiss, and Jackson and Lyna even used to have to babysit me every now and then. I would play in Poulain's office and he always smiled at me like I was a mistake, but a mistake that could be handled. When I was about seven, we moved to New York. I don't know if it was mom's idea or the patron's idea, but one night, she came into my room, and I thought she was coming to put me to bed, but instead she just took my pillow and shoved it onto my face. I couldn't breathe, it was dark, and everything got tingly and numb all at the same time. I don't really remember what happened after that.'

Joe was cut off and honked angrily. 'You said you have an adoptive mother?'

'Sort of a semi-mom. She's my godmother, but I call her Momma,' Augustine said simply, and it was clear from her tone that she didn't intend to expound on the topic.

After a long pause, Carol finally spoke. 'Are you going to stay with Jackson and Lisa once the twins are born?'

Augustine nodded. 'If they want me to.'

'I'm a realist,' Carol said. 'It could be a few years of therapy before Jackson responds and is able to integrate. Until then, Lisa will need as much help as possible, but I can't be here as much as I'd like.'

'Don't worry, Dr Bellamy, I'll take care of everyone,' she replied moderately half-heartedly.

The traffic finally started moving, and within a few minutes, they were driving on the bridge that led to the psychiatric hospital. Despite having a head start, the EMTs were just then pulling out Jackson's gurney. Lisa watched them from a wheelchair that was attended by a nurse, but as soon as Augustine got out of the car, she went over and took the other nurse's place. Carol and Joe walked along after Jackson's gurney to the admitting area, where they had three thick doors closed and locked behind them.

'It's basically a prison ward,' said the person leading them in. 'We have some very dangerous people here who are not ready to be in society.'

Augustine sped up and pushed Lisa's wheelchair next to the gurney so that the older woman could hold Jackson's hand as they rolled along. They took him to a white, padded room with barred windows and a hospital bed. The nurses lifted the stretcher and transferred him to the room bed, quickly closing the restrains before he could respond. Augustine pushed Lisa into the room, setting the wheelchair right next to Jackson's bed.

'We're gonna go get him checked in,' she said softly. 'Will you be fine in here?'

Lisa nodded, and with that confirmation, Augustine left the room, closing the door with a clank behind her. A moment later, there was the sound of an automatic lock slipping closed.

'Are they gone?' Jackson asked exhaustedly.

'Yeah, I'm the only one here,' Lisa said, pulling herself forward by grabbing on the edge of the bed. 'What's wrong?'

'Come a little closer,' he said, his fingers stretching.

Standing slowly, she took a step toward the bed, rolled the wheelchair closer and was about to sit down again when he spoke.

'No,' said Jackson, holding his hand up as best he could against the restraints. 'I'm going to be away for awhile, so I want to feel the babies.'

'Jackson...' Lisa said quietly, but regardless stepped close enough so his fingers could brush against her stomach.

'I can't...' he started, drifting off as he strained to flatten his hand against her stomach.

Lisa looked at him for a moment before blowing out a little puff of breath and reaching down to undo the wrist restraint, taking his hand and holding it against her. He gave her a little smile, but she realised that the smile didn't spread to his eyes as he flexed his fingers under her hand.

'Okay, let's go ahead and—'

In no more than a split second, he took his hand from her and rolled over enough to throw his arm over to the other wrist and free his hand from the restraint. Scrambling, she tried to grab him back and press him against the bed, but her stomach got in the way. After a few seconds of struggling with them, he'd managed to loosen both his chest and waist restraints, and before she was able to duck, he brought his arm up and connected his elbow harshly with her trachea. Coughing raggedly, she fell back into the wheelchair, her hands pressed up against her windpipe. He didn't even pay attention to her as he sat up, undoing the restraints on his legs and ankles.

'Thanks,' he said with a smile and a wink as he kicked the restraints completely off and slid off the gurney. 'Couldn't have done it on my own.'

A pitiful look came over her face as he looked at the door, then turned back to her. Tipping his head calmly, he stepped over her and put his hands on the arms of the wheelchair, slowly pushing her back to the wall with his face just inches from hers. Lisa stared at him as he took hold of her upper arms, brushing them up to catch the ends of her pinned-up hair and twist the curls around his fingers. She breathed in and out slowly and carefully, her entire body tense. His jaw set, his hands started to shake as he tugged on her hair before clasping her neck. Her eyes opened wide and she tried to kick at him, her hands flying up to claw at the back of his own.

'Don't fight it, Leese,' he hissed through his teeth. 'Come on, _sweetie_.'

'Jackson...' she managed in a breathy voice.

He shook his head. 'Not now, Lisa.'

Stressful tears rolled down her cheeks as the room and her husband became blurred. If her husband weren't holding so tenaciously to her neck, her head would have fallen to the side, but all it did was just loll a bit. Her eyes half closed as Jackson squeezed tighter, and she was about to completely pass out when there was a click and her father appeared in her sight, moving to her seemingly in slow motion and grabbing Jackson's hands and prying them from Lisa's neck. As Lisa fell to the side, Joe shoved Jackson away.

'We need help in here! Code A!' yelled Augustine from the door as Carol and the check-in nurse moved past her to help pin Jackson to the floor. 'Bring haldol!'

After yelling, Augustine went into the room and over to Lisa, tapping the side of her face in panic. On the floor, Joe and the nurse had thrown themselves over Jackson's legs, trying to hold him at bay as Carol pinned down his arms. After less than a minute, though it seemed like forever, a team of psych ward nurses and orderlies burst in, helping them lift Jackson onto the bed. The seven people strapped him into the bed, Jackson fighting against them even after he was completely strapped down. He yelled and tried to move away from Carol as she came up to him, one syringe held between her fingers and the other poised ready to inject. Without much ceremony, she harshly stabbed it into his upper arm, quickly injecting all of it before preparing the other and doing the same. He glared at her with his jaw tensed as his movements slowed to something resembling twitching. Slowly, his eyes closed and he fell completely still.

Carol stood by Jackson, staring down at him as she breathed heavily with the second syringe still clasped in her hand. After a moment, Joe turned from the group and walked to Augustine, who was in the process of triaging Lisa.

'Lisa? Can you focus on me?' Augustine asked, holding a finger up to her nose as she supported Lisa's head.

'God,' murmured Joe, bending down and grabbing Lisa's hand, setting it up on the arm of the wheelchair instead of hanging to her side like it had been.

'It's going to be easier for us if we can lay her down,' said Augustine absentmindedly, looking back and forth until turning to look at the remaining psychiatric staff. 'We need a gurney.'

'Should we call the hospital?' asked Joe, rubbing Lisa's knee.

'For now, just get a gurney to stretch her out on. I think she's a little shocked,' Augustine replied, smiling at Lisa encouragingly as she held the side of her face.

Once the staff wheeled in the gurney, everyone helped Lisa onto it before wheeling her into an unoccupied room. Carol brushed her daughter's hair from her neck before examining the heavily bruised area with knit brow. Her fingers went lightly over the skin, trying to determine if Jackson had managed to damage the tracheal cartilage or perhaps even fracture Lisa's hyoid bone. She pressed against Lisa's neck slightly.

'Can you breathe for me, baby?'

Lisa breathed, and Carol visibly relaxed. She smoothed back Lisa's hair from her face, smiling at her daughter.

'It's gonna be all right, honey,' said Carol. 'Just lie here for as long as you need to so you can calm down. Jackson's asleep now, and he's strapped down very securely. You don't have anything to worry about.'

'We should probably take her to Metropolitan just to be safe,' said Augustine, shaking her head and putting her hands on her hips.

Carol held up her hand, gesturing to Augustine and walking out to the hall. Once outside, she leaned against the wall, crossing her arms and watching Augustine close the door behind her.

'I want you to call Metropolitan and explain to them what happened. It's not an emergency, but Lisa _does_ need to be checked out by a general practitioner and probably an OB-GYN. She's been under a lot of stress the last couple of days and I want to make sure that hasn't had any adverse effects on the babies,' said Carol, looking at Augustine intently. 'Can you handle that?'


	13. Afternoon, 10 December 2009

A/N: Less than three weeks before I leave for Africa!!!

---

An hour later, Lisa was resting comfortably in a bed at Metropolitan Hospital, focused more on the snow outside than the people in the room with her. Augustine was gone, taking the subway back to Jane Street to meet the kids at home, and her parents were of course there talking to the doctors, but nothing interested Lisa until she smelled an extremely familiar perfume. A little smile came over her face and she turned to look at the door as Lyna walked in.

'Hey,' she said, her voice raspy.

'Hello Lisa,' Lyna said, strolling to the chair by the window. 'I heard about what happened with Rippner.'

Lisa didn't answer, instead watching Lyna pull over the chair.

'It is fortuitous I was called here,' she said, leaning closer to the pregnant woman. 'I just happened to see a woman on a respirator in the intensive care unit. She looked quite familiar to me, and I realised that it was Eleni.'

Lisa tried to sit up and get out of the bed, suddenly angered, but Lyna managed to keep her down, pressing on her shoulders.

'Keep your mind on what is important, Lisa,' said Lyna, looking at Lisa through thickly rimmed glasses. 'And you know what I am talking about.'

'Lisa,' came Joe's voice from the corner of the room. 'The doctors would like to take some x-rays, do a few ultrasounds, and probably do a CT scan.'

Lyna looked at Lisa again. 'Finish all your tests and I will take care of Eleni. I will see you in a few hours.'

---

Eleni Petalas was definitely in her own little world. From the words around her, she could only assume that she was, in fact, going to die, but no one bothered to tell her when. Hell, they hadn't even told he where she was. The nurses came and went, squirting morphine into her IV, but otherwise leaving her alone, so when a person stopped by her bed for more than a few seconds, she was curious. Forcing one of her eyes open, she looked at the woman beside her, the look on her face immediately going dour. To anyone else, the woman would have looked like any nurse dressed in light blue scrubs, her dark hair tied back and glasses perched on her nose, but Eleni knew differently.

'I see you are intubated,' Lyna said, towering over the Grecian woman's bed and injecting a syringe into the port atop the IV in her hand. 'Let us wake you up a little, but I suppose we will have to keep this to yes and no questions.'

Eleni glared at her, looking quite defiant despite having one eye swollen shut and the other one red with a broken capillary.

'I want to know what you did to him,' said Lyna, picking up Eleni's patient chart and flipping through it. 'His wife is very upset after being attacked by him at the Manhattan Centre.'

Even through the large apparatus taped to her face, Lyna could see Eleni grin triumphantly. Looking over the clipboard, she clicked her tongue.

'Will I have to extubate you and force you to speak?'

The grin immediately fell from the other woman's face and she pressed back against the pillow.

'Looks like Watson got you good before you killed her,' said Lyna, slipping the clipboard back into the container at the foot of the bed. 'All right, let us start this.'

Walking to the other side of Eleni, Lyna flipped open a notepad and set it on the woman's thigh next to her amazingly uninjured right hand. She crammed a pen into Eleni's hand and set it atop the pad.

'I will try for yes or no, but some things you will need to tell me,' said Lyna, leaning over the other woman. 'For yes, raise your index finger. For no, keep it down. Do you understand?'

After a moment, Eleni raised her index finger.

'Good,' replied Lyna. 'Did your commands come from Matthias Poulain?'

Yes.

'Did you manipulate Jackson Rippner medically prior to his disappearance?'

No.

'Did you manipulate Jackson Rippner medically after his disappearance?'

Yes.

'As described in your thesis?'

Yes.

'Was Poulain trying to bring Jackson back into the Society?'

A long pause, and her finger did not raise. Lyna raised an eyebrow.

'Did you hear me? Was Poulain trying to bring Jackson back into the Society?'

Eleni gave her as angry of a face as she could and still didn't raise her finger.

'Then... why did he do this?' Lyna asked, stunned.

Slowly, Eleni began to scrawl messily on the pad of paper. Lyna watched intently, trying to read the word through her hand before the other woman moved her hand back, which knocked the pad onto the floor. Lyna immediately dove after the pad, flipping it over to look at what she'd written.

'Abreaction,' Lyna murmured, staring at the word for a moment. 'For who? Jackson?'

No.

'Poulain?'

Yes.

'He needed to see Jackson again for closure?'

Eleni raised her finger up and down as though having difficultly deciding.

'He needed Jackson to provide closure for him?'

Yes.

Keeping her eyes on Eleni, Lyna flipped the page and set it back on her leg.

'Is that why all of the regional heads have been killed?'

Again, a raised finger.

'It is all for a purge?'

Yes.

Lyna knit her brow. 'He ruined Jackson's life to purge his Society? After all that Jackson's been through, all that Jackson's wife has been through, he destroyed a man just to get revenge on a bunch of people? Could he not have used an active manager?'

No.

'Why use Jackson?'

After yet another pause, Eleni began to write on the pad of paper, Lyna sounding out the word as she wrote.

'Ob-lig-ations,' Lyna said in a choked voice. 'No. All of his obligations to the Society stopped once he quit.'

Eleni grinned again.

'Great,' hissed Lyna. 'So he was still under contract?'

No.

Lyna slumped her shoulders, rolling her eyes. 'You are saying that even though Jackson is not under contract, Poulain wanted _him_ to participate in this purge?'

Yes.

Again, knit brows. 'Why?'

Lyna looked down, expecting to see Eleni write something, but instead, the woman's arm jerked, throwing the pen onto the floor. The Ukrainian bent down to pick up the pad and pen and was about to shove it back into her hand when she looked up and noticed that Eleni's eyes had rolled back in her head as she went into spasm.

'We have a code blue!' screamed a nurse who happened to be walking by. 'Multiple organ failure!'

Holding the paper and pen to her chest, Lyna backed up as a team descended on Eleni. There was a huge scurry of movement as they worked on pulling non-essentials from her chest to clear it off before smearing conductive gel on it. One of the nurses picked up the defibrillator and set it on Eleni's chest.

'Clear!' she said, and everyone took their hands off the woman before there was a loud thunk and whirring.

Backing up more, Lyna slipped to the wall and across to the door. The mêlée continued as she walked out the door, the last thing she heard being the telltale sound of the heart monitor going flat without the sound of the paddles charging once more.

---

By the time Lyna made it back to Lisa's room, Joe and Carol had left to go deal with their grandchildren at home, both hoping to make the adjustment of missing both parents as smooth as possible. An ultrasonographer had rolled in an ultrasound machine and was watching it warm up as Lisa lay back on the bed looking up at the ceiling. When Lyna walked in, Lisa turned and gave her an odd look.

'Scrubs?' she asked quietly and a bit roughly before continuing. 'Did you find anything out?'

'A little,' Lyna said, focusing more on the lubricant the ultrasonographer was squirting onto Lisa's stomach than Lisa's face. She scrunched up her nose. 'I have a place to start at least.'

Lisa made a little approving noise before turning to watch the screen of the ultrasound machine. Lyna watched the probe of the machine move across Lisa's stomach with a raised eyebrow.

'Do those red marks not hurt?'

'Hm?' asked Lisa, turning back to Lyna.

'Are they lesions?'

The ultrasonographer laughed a little before putting the back of his gloved hand to his mouth and clearing his throat. Lisa smiled knowingly at him.

'They're stretch marks,' Lisa explained softly. 'New skin created because my stomach isn't usually big enough to occupy these two.'

'Ah,' said Lyna, trying to seem nonchalant. 'This seems like a very inhumane process, and I believe that considering how difficult your Jonathan is, it is not worth it.'

Taking a chair and pulling it closer, Lyna sat down next to the bed.

'Eleni did not bring on the fugue, but she did support it with medication after it happened,' Lyna said, leaning back in the chair and watching the computer screen on the ultrasound machine. 'She used the techniques put forward in her doctoral thesis. So that is a picture of the babies?'

The ultrasonographer, looking at the 3-D image, answered as he pointed. 'There's baby one, the girl, and baby two, the boy.'

'In her thesis, did she happen to mention how to fix him?' asked Lisa dryly.

'No,' Lyna said with a bit of a grin. 'The amnesia was supported by diazepam injections, and my best guess by looking at the date on her chart was that Jackson wandered around for a couple of days before the diazepam flushed out of his system and his brain had a chance to reset.'

'Then how did he have all that blood on him when he came home?'

The ultrasonographer tried to avoid making eye contact with either of them, but both women could tell he suddenly got very uncomfortable. Lyna, however, did not care in the least. 'Well, was it fresh?'

Lisa didn't answer out of concern for the ultrasonographer, who grew tenser. 'Does everything look okay with the babies?'

He looked at her with a relieved smile, seeing his chance to exit. 'They look just fine, a little big for their age, but I'm sure you already knew that.'

'I had a general idea,' Lisa replied as he shut off the machine and began wiping the gel off of her abdomen.

The two women watched the ultrasonographer gather his things and leave, and it was silent until the door clicked behind him.

'Dried, now that you mention it.'


	14. Evening, 10 December 2009

A/N: If anyone wants postcards from Ghana, PM me with your address, whee. Less than two weeks!

---

'Mom! Dad! I'm home!' screamed Hediyeh as she threw her backpack down on the table across from the elevator, immediately walking into the kitchen and pulling open the fridge. She drank from the orange juice carton for a moment. 'Mom? Dad?'

There was the sound of someone running down the stairs from the top floor, so she expected to see Jackson round the corner, but instead Augustine appeared.

'Are mom and dad sleeping?' asked Hediyeh, sipping out of the carton again.

'Hedi,' said Augustine solemnly as she walked over and sat down at the counter. 'Your mom and dad aren't here.'

She knew something terrible had happened, but rather than admitting to it, she just stared at Augustine. 'They went out?'

Augustine shook her head. 'Your dad's at Manhattan Psychiatric.'

The orange juice slipped out of Hediyeh's hand and she didn't notice until it splashed all over her legs. Gripping at the air for a moment, she stared open-mouthed at Augustine.

'How long is he there?' she asked softly.

Coming around the counter, Augustine grabbed a dishrag and bent down, sopping up the orange juice. 'I don't know. He had a very violent attack and we had to have him taken there by ambulance.'

'Is he okay?' she asked, looking down at her nanny.

'Yeah, he's...' Augustine drifted. 'He's fine.'

A moment of silence passed as Augustine stood and turned on the spigot, running the cloth under the water until Hediyeh asked the inevitable question.

'Is mom with him?'

Augustine froze, her hands clasping hard to the dishcloth. She stared at it, almost memorising every looped string, trying to avoid the question.

'Is mom—'

'She's in the hospital,' Augustine interrupted, leaning forward and turning off the faucet as she dropped the cloth.

'At the psychiatric hospital,' Hediyeh said, her voice descending in pitch. 'With dad.'

Augustine turned to look down at the girl. 'At Metropolitan. Your dad attacked her.'

Hediyeh pressed her hand to her mouth, stepping back a bit. 'Is... is she okay? Are the babies okay? When is she coming home? Can I see—'

'I don't know!' said Augustine with exasperation before looking away. 'I don't know.'

Clenching her jaw, Hediyeh closed her hands into fists and stomped off, taking long strides before breaking into a run and going up the stairs. Augustine paused for only a moment before following after her, reaching the top of the stairs as the door to Hediyeh's room slammed shut. She waited at the top of the stairs, pressing her hand to her face before going to the door, trying the knob before banging on the wood.

'Hediyeh, open the door,' she said as calmly as possible.

'Leave me alone!' she screamed in response. 'I don't want to come out until my mom and dad are home! I want everything to be the same again! Nothing's been the same since _you_ came!'

'Hedi, that has nothing—'

'Go _away_!' the girl screamed at the top of her lungs, and there was a loud thump as what sounded suspiciously like a book hit the other side of the door.

Augustine jumped back from the door. She opened her mouth to say something, but instead, she just turned around and walked down the hallway then down the stairs as quietly as possible. Hediyeh, her head pressed to the door, listened until her footsteps died away and she heard the television turn on downstairs. After a couple of minutes, she stepped back from the door, pushing the talk button on the phone in her hands and quickly dialling a number. Pressing the phone to her ear, she watched the door as she listened to the phone ringing.

There was a click. 'Hello?'

'Hey,' Hediyeh said softly. 'Is your mom home?'

There was a moment of silence. 'No, why?'

'I need you to do something for me.'

---

It was well after dinnertime when a meek knock came on Hediyeh's door.

'Go away, Augustine,' Hediyeh said from her bed, dropping the book she was reading down onto her chest.

'Hedi?' said a voice close to the door. 'Can you let me in?'

'Mama?' Hediyeh asked, jumping up from the bed and walking to the door. Cracking open the door, she looked at Lisa before opening the door and letting her in, immediately hugging her. 'Lisa-maman, are you okay? Are the babies okay?'

'Everything's fine,' Lisa responded with a rough voice before coughing a little. 'Just a little bruise.'

Hediyeh looked up from her mother's chest, brushing her fingers on the angry purplish skin. 'Oh... that looks...'

Before Hediyeh could continue, Lisa wrapped her arms around her, pressing her nose to her daughter's hair. Closing her eyes, Hediyeh laid her head against Lisa's chest again, listening to her breathing.

'Don't be mad at your dad,' Lisa said. 'He's not well.'

'I know,' Hediyeh said softly.

'We're working as hard as we can to get him better,' Lisa continued, and to Hediyeh, it seemed like she was trying to convince herself rather than her daughter. 'He's in a safe place now, and all we can hope is that he'll be home really soon.'

'I don't want him to come home.'

Lisa stopped breathing for a moment before holding Hediyeh away from her. 'Don't say that.'

'If he comes home, he might leave again,' Hediyeh said, tears gathering in her eyes. 'It made you so unhappy when he left, and I don't want to see you like that again. I'm afraid that he'll find a way to lie to the people at the hospital so he can get home.'

Lisa shook her head. 'No, honey, they're going to make sure he's completely well before he comes home. He'll be just like he was before he got sick.'

'He's always been sick,' said Hediyeh unbelievingly.

'We know what's wrong now so we can fix it,' Lisa replied with a sad smile.

There was a long moment before Hediyeh reached up to play with Lisa's hair. 'I don't think you should be alone tonight.'

Lisa blinked at the very adult sentiment. 'I'll be all right, Hedi.'

'I'll sleep with you tonight, you know, to protect you,' Hediyeh replied simply.

The confusion on Lisa's face melted into understanding as she pulled Hediyeh to her again. 'Okay, you can protect me.'


	15. Afternoon, 17 December 2009

A/N: Back from Ghana! Well, rather I was home for two days and am now in California doing my normal island life before real life sets back in. Pictures from Ghana are on my devART and my LJ, enafrique.

---

A week later, Hediyeh sat on the floor of the living room, her hands in fists in her lap. She stared at the clock watching each second pass, wishing it would go faster. Two o'clock, the package would be delivered. Two o'clock, she promised. Two o'clock, you know where to find it. Two o'clock, it finally clicked over, and a few seconds later, the elevator doors opened. Hediyeh didn't even turn around, listening to two women chatter. There was the sound of rustling fabric and she crawled to the other side of the couch, watching the women walk up the stairs before focusing on the coat that had been thrown on the entry table. Once the women disappeared, she ran with socked feet to the table, throwing open the coat and using the tiny sewing scissors in her hand to open the bottom hem. She could see the outline of the thing she'd asked for, the rounded edges, the smooth surface.

After a few moments of pressing it out of the hem, she took the needle and thread she had stuck in her blouse and used it to sew the hem back with a quick surgical stitch that Augustine had taught her. After looking at the little booklet in her hands, she grabbed her backpack from under the table then checked up the stairs before walking to the door next to the elevator and opening it slowly, closing it with just a light click behind her before running down the stairs.

On the ground floor, she peeked out the glass window to make sure no one was in the lobby before opening the door and running across the tile. Opening the front door, she sprinted down the street away from Horatio, not stopping until she got two and a half blocks away. Looking back the way she came, she flagged a taxi, jumping into it as soon as it made its way to the curb.

'JFK Airport, Lufthansa terminal,' she said simply, digging into her bag as the cab jolted forward. Without question, she stuck a fifty-dollar bill through the plexiglass and the cabby took it, never saying a word.

There was surprisingly little traffic on the drive, and Hediyeh spent the time staring at the much shorter skyline of Queens. There was a creeping sensation in her chest, a tight nervousness, but she refused to let it take her over. She had the money from her father's safe, and no one else would notice it was gone; everyone thought she was at school, so it would be hours before anyone realised she was missing. No one would have a clue until they couldn't do anything about it.

'You said Lufthansa?' asked the cabbie, snapping Hediyeh from her thoughts.

'Yeah,' she replied in a sort of dreamy tone, zipping up her bag as they pulled up to the airport.

The cab stopped at the Lufthansa area, the cabbie looking at the fifty as Hediyeh scooted across the leather seat. Gathering up her bag, she stepped out into the cold December air, mixing in with the seemingly thousands of people getting ready to fly home for the holidays. As she waited in line, she stared at the plastic as she held it and a clean pile of wrapped bills in her hands. Agatha had done almost as good of a job as her mom would have done had her mom known what Hediyeh was planning.

Of course, had Melissa known what Hediyeh was planning, she would have stopped her and got her in trouble with her mom and grandparents. From prior experience, Hediyeh knew that Agatha wouldn't say a word.

'Next!' said a counter attendant, getting antsy when no one stepped forward. 'I said next!'

Hediyeh looked up from the things in her hands, realising that she was the one being called. Stepping forward, she smiled at the woman.

'One one-way ticket to Paris, coach class,' she said calmly, setting her fresh passport on the counter.

The woman took the passport, quickly typing the information on it into the computer. 'We have a flight leaving in about two hours. Is that all right?'

'Sounds good,' she said, leaning against the counter to watch the woman type more.

'Do you have any bags to check?'

'Nope, none today,' said Hediyeh, shifting the backpack strap on her shoulder. 'Just a carry-on.'

'All right,' said the woman. 'That will be $2,028.'

Setting the pile of bills on the counter, she looked over the amount before flipping the bag over her shoulder and pulling out more bills from the side pocket. The woman stared at the large amount of cash, which unnerved Hediyeh, but when she took the money, the younger girl calmed.

'My parents don't like cards,' she explained. 'They prefer I just take cash with me.'

The woman just gave her an odd smile as the tickets printed out. Taking them from the printer, she tapped them on the counter and slipped them into an envelope.

'You'll be leaving from Terminal 1,' said the woman, highlighting the gate information on the top ticket. 'Thank you, Miss Greene. Have a lovely flight, and enjoy yourself in France.'

'I'm sure I will,' said Hediyeh, taking the tickets from the woman.

Once she went through the security check, Hediyeh completely considered herself to be Zoë Greene, and no one knew the wiser.

---

Talking with Melissa had gone far longer than Lisa thought it would, so by the time Melissa left and Lisa was able to get down to the kitchen for breakfast, she was so hungry she actually felt sick. Staring at the fridge, she dug out a grapefruit and sliced it, throwing it into a bowl and scooting it across the counter before beginning to walk around it. As he walked by the phone, it rang, so she grabbed it and pushed the talk button right as she sat down.

'Rippner residence.'

'Mrs Rippner,' said the woman on the other end. 'This is Harmony Wilkenson, the secretary at Chapin. I was wondering if we need to fax your daughter's homework assignments to her.'

Lisa froze, the spoonful of grapefruit she was eating perched on her lip. 'Excuse me?'

'Your daughter hasn't been to any of her classes today,' explained the woman with some question in her voice. 'We assumed that she was home sick.'

'You're talking about Hediyeh Rippner,' checked Lisa, setting down the spoon.

There was a shuffling of papers. 'Yep, Hediyeh Mahdis Rippner, Class Five.'

'And... you're sure she's not there?' Lisa asked in a choked voice.

'Mrs Rippner, are you all right?'

'Please, can you check again?' she begged the woman, dropping the spoon with a loud clatter onto the counter. 'Please, go to her homeroom, go to whatever class she should be in, check the bathrooms, check everything, God, please!'

'Mrs Rippner,' said the woman in a measured voice. 'Your daughter isn't here.'

'There has to be something wrong with your computer system.'

'Is there someone else I can talk to? Is your husband home?'

That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Lisa could feel it coming, just like any sufferer can, and before she could do anything, the anxiety welled up in her chest and she found herself beginning to hyperventilate. She took fast, shallow breaths before trying to stand up and just falling, grabbing at the counter stool with one hand as she fell, the phone skidding across the floor when she hit it. Stretched on the floor, she kept hyperventilating with tears rolling down her face, listening somewhere in the back of her mind to the chattering woman's voice leaking from the speaker of the phone. The room grew fuzzy and she felt her head lolling before there was the thumping of feet behind her.

'Oh shit, Lisa!' said Augustine, sliding in socked feet across the hardwood floor before bending down and turning Lisa onto her back.

'Hello? Mrs Rippner? Do I need to call emergency?'

Augustine looked over at the phone before reaching out and putting it to her ear. 'Hello?'

'Is Mrs Rippner all right?'

'Who is this?'

'Harmony Wilkenson, I work at her daughter's school.'

'Is something wrong with Hediyeh?' asked Augustine, tensing up as she tried to balance the phone against her shoulder and tend to Lisa at the same time. 'Come on, Lisa, deep breaths...'

'She's not at school today,' said Harmony. 'We thought she was home sick. Has something happened?'

'I sent her off to school this morning,' Augustine replied, raising an eyebrow. 'I'm her nanny, and we did just the same as we do every morning today.'

'She's probably just ditching,' the secretary said with distaste.

'No,' Augustine said, putting the palm of her hand against Lisa's forehead. 'Hediyeh's not one to ditch school. Listen, I need to deal with Mrs Rippner... can I call you back when we figure this all out?'

'We need—' the woman started, but Augustine just hung up the phone, dropping it onto the floor.

'Lisa, Lisa, look at me. Focus on me,' Augustine said before looking up the stairs. 'Carol!'

Augustine relaxed as Lisa's breathing became more regular, but quickly returned to panic when Lisa's hands flew to her stomach and she curled into herself enough that she rolled onto her side. Reaching out, she tried to turn Lisa back onto her back, but Lisa remained curled up, her eyes squeezed shut, even when her mother and father made it downstairs and over to her.

'What happened?' asked Carol, trying to coax Lisa out of her curled position as Joe went to her other side, leaning down to murmur to their daughter.

'She fell,' Augustine answered lamely. 'I... Hediyeh's not at school. She's missing.'

'What?' Carol said, taking her hands from her daughter to look at Augustine.

'This isn't important now!' said Joe with urgency, and both women turned to give him dirty looks, but he wasn't looking up at them as he reached around to rub Lisa's back. 'Call 911 _right now_.'

'We have it handled, Mr Reisert,' Augustine replied. 'She's just having another panic attack. It'll be fine in a couple of minutes, just let her calm down.'

'I said _call emergency_,' Joe yelled, immediately snapping his head up to look at the young nurse. 'She's just started having contractions.'


	16. Evening, 17 December 2009

A/N: I smell like _K. pneumoniae_! Woo!

---

Dongfang Mingzhuta. He didn't know what it meant: it could be a person's name, a place, a... he didn't know. For some reason, however, it was in his mind that night as he stared at the padded room around him, his arms held in a Posey jacket. He quickly realised upon being put in the cell that unlike when he was a child, he was no longer able to break himself out of a straitjacket by dislocating his shoulder. After having his arm popped back into place by one of his nurses, he just resigned himself to sitting sullenly in the corner.

He had to admit, he was gaining some clarity to his life. Every day for three hours at a time, he worked with a therapist who specialised in dissociative disorders. For the first couple of days whilst cutting back on his diazepam, he had a hard time understanding exactly what he was in the hospital for, where he'd been, et cetera, but after being visited by a very bruised and very pregnant Lisa on his fourth day in the hospital, his mind began to clear. His therapist provided him with a copy of Eleni Petalas' doctoral thesis, encouraging him to read and understand it. By the end of the first week, he recognised and understood his multiple personalities as described by the late psychiatrist.

Unfortunately, understanding didn't help him control his alternate identities. He had huge time gaps in his life—for example, he had absolutely no recollection of why he'd been placed in the padded room. He remembered being with Lisa when she visited, remembered her crying when he asked what happened to her neck, remembered most of the time with his therapist, things like that. What he couldn't remember was what happened in his missing four months or what happened when he was checked into the hospital. The therapist was helping guide him through the _locations_ he'd been whilst he was gone, but so far things only came back in fragments.

Today, he assumed it had to be Shanghai. He regulated his breathing, trying to focus his mind on the two words he could remember. Once he dropped off into thought, it was like lucid dreaming. He could feel people around him, the singsong tones of standard Mandarin blurring into the sound of water splashing against a boat. It was raining lightly as he looked at the skyline, his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

'Dongfang Mingzhuta,' said a voice next to him, and he turned.

'I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese,' he said to the Chinese woman who had appeared beside him.

'No, we call that the Dongfang Mingzhuta,' she replied with a smile, reaching out to hold her umbrella over his head. 'The Oriental Pearl Tower.'

He looked at her for a moment more before turning to look at the bright tower. Memories of Berlin came to him, thoughts about a laughing redhead at a pub. As her face materialised in his mind, a raging headache broke out in his temple and he staggered, slumping against the tiny woman beside him. They were the only two people on the deck of the ferry, so when they both fell onto the grainy surface, no one came to help them. The umbrella in her hand rolled away, tapping against an empty bench behind them. He lay on her chest, his breath coming in staggering puffs as he grabbed at his head.

'Are you all right?' she asked shakily as the rain fell harder, soaking both of them.

'You have to help me,' he stammered, reaching up to grab the collar of her shirt. 'I'm lost. I... I don't know who I am. Please, you have to help.'

'What are you...' she murmured, staring into his eyes and seeing only thick confusion. 'We're docking. I'll take you to the hospital.'

'Thank you,' he replied, rolling over to let the rain fall on his face.

She stood, grabbing the umbrella and holding it over him before helping him to his feet. The boat shook as it came to the ferry slip, the clanking sound of the ramp jarring Jackson's brain as it slipped across the concrete. Taking his hand, the woman walked quickly, pulling him along behind her as she shoved through people to make it onto the dock. They moved from the dim lighting of the marina into the bright lights of the ferry terminal, standing under the overhang as the woman searched through her purse. She pulled out a cell phone before looking up at him and putting her hand over her mouth.

'You're... you're bleeding!' she said, and it took him a moment to look down at himself. In the brighter light, he could see patches of darker material on his jacket. Pressing his hand to one of the spots, he looked up at her to see that her blouse was covered in blood from him falling on her.

'I think you're bleeding,' he responded, pointing to her blouse.

She immediately panicked, pulling a handkerchief from her purse and blotting at her shirt as he opened his coat and looked down at himself. The lining of his jacket was sticky with blood, his shirt completely soaked through, but no apparent injury. As he pulled off the coat, the holster of his knife came into view and he stared at it, pausing for a moment before pulling the blade out a couple of inches.

Droplets of blood beaded on the surface of the knife blade.

The woman stopped blotting, staring at the knife with a slightly open mouth. Sniffling, she backed up a couple of steps, her eyes wide.

Jackson looked up at her. 'No, calm down... I don't...'

'Police!' she screamed raggedly, doing a skipping run away from him as tears ran down her face. '_Police_!'

'No! Please!' he said, making a move toward her and reaching out to grab her wrist.

She dropped to her knees, staring up at him with her hand grabbing for her wrist, the fingers brushing against his as she whispered pleadingly. 'Please, please don't kill me. Please, please.'

He was about to answer her when a voice came from behind him. 'Christian!'

Letting go of the woman's wrist, he stood up straight before slowly turning to look at a blonde woman who was running toward him.

'I've been looking everywhere for you,' she said as she reached him, immediately buttoning his pea coat. 'It's dangerous for you to wander off like that.'

'I'm sorry,' he murmured as she rubbed up his arms, keeping contact with his eyes, but he didn't recognise her at all. 'I don't think I know you.'

'Your name is Christian Poulain, and I'm Nitsa Petalas,' she responded with a smile. 'You're having one of your attacks.'

Silence fell between them before Eleni looked over at the Chinese woman who was still cowering on the ground. The Greek woman gave her a blank stare as she grasped to Jackson, who was staring with half-closed eyes at her jaw line.

'Thank you for helping him,' Eleni said in a detached voice. 'I'm sorry if he scared you.'

The woman shook her head jerkily, backing up a bit before using a bench to pull herself up. Without a word to either of them, she turned and jogged away, never looking back. Once she was gone, Jackson felt a little prick in his neck and then the world faded around him, but not before he saw in his mind's eye the lifeless face of another oriental woman, blood pooling under his feet as he looked up to see himself in a blood-streaked mirror.

Jerking his head, Jackson came back to the present and immediately began thrashing around, his eyes wide. It was the first flash of memory stemming from his violent personality, the personality that his therapist claimed he had but he continued to deny, instead insisting that violence was part of his host personality.

In one of the theses his therapist had given him, Jackson had read that the only way to mend the personalities together was to have the patient realise the accuracy of the diagnosis so that he would begin to make a complete commitment to fuse the alters into his own host personality. As the blood-covered face of Saeng Chaiyasan flashed into his mind again, Jackson fell to the side and threw up bile, deciding at that moment that he had to overcome this dark side of himself, to bring it to the point of atrophy so that it would disintegrate.

---

Jonathan Rippner really had no idea what was going on. He knew he'd been picked up early from school, and that he was in the hospital in a room not including his mother or sister, and that the people around him seemed very on-edge, but all he really cared about was the little colouring book that his father brought to him from France a year or so earlier. He muttered the words as he coloured the pictures, a technique his father had taught him. Once the door opened and a doctor came in, however, Jonathan looked up with a smile.

'Are my brother and sister here now?' he asked, dropping his crayons and walking to the OB-GYN. 'Do they look like Daddy or Mommy? What are their names?'

'They're not here yet,' the OB-GYN replied, squatting down to Jonathan's height. 'It's still a little early for them to come, so we went ahead and stopped them.'

'They're too excited!' exclaimed Jonathan, throwing his hands in the air. 'I bet my little brother wants to get away from my little sister because she has _cooties_.'

The OB-GYN laughed and mussed up his hair before standing and walking to the boy's grandparents and nanny. 'We've been able to stabilise her and the babies. She's sleeping now.'

'So everything's all right?' asked Joe, leaning forward in his chair.

'We put her on an IV of magnesium sulphate and would like to keep her on it for at least the next forty-eight hours. That should be enough to hold off the labour until closer to her real due date,' the woman said in a calming tone. 'You got her here early enough that the labour hadn't advanced much, so you can relax. If we keep her here at the hospital, she should be able to deliver a little closer to the due date. We've injected her with steroids to help jump-start the babies' lung development, so that will help some.'

'Jonathan was born early also,' said Carol, watching the boy as he coloured. 'He has asthma because of it.'

'That's something very common in premies,' the OB-GYN replied. 'Well, like I said, she's sleeping now, so I think the best thing you can do is just go home and get some rest. We'll take good care of her here, and you can come visit in the morning once she's calmed down completely from this scare.'

Joe stood before offering a hand to Carol to help her stand. 'Thank you, doctor.'

Augustine took the finality in Joe's tone to mean that they were leaving, so she went over and scooped up Jonathan into her arms, holding him on her hip as she looked at the page of his colouring book, reading the words on it aloud. Joe let the women walk out before turning back to the doctor.

'I'm sure you know that her husband is at Manhattan Psychiatric and her daughter is missing,' said Joe quietly.

'She managed to tell us, yes,' the doctor replied, putting her clipboard under her arm.

'We're hoping that her husband will be well enough to attend the birth,' Joe added, taking a step back closer to the doctor. 'About how long do you think he has?'

The woman thought for a moment. 'I can't really be completely certain, but I'd say no more than four, maybe five weeks. Lisa's right between twenty-nine and thirty weeks, and we'd really like to get her as close to thirty-seven weeks as possible, but I have a feeling that she's under enough stress that she won't make it that long.'

Joe nodded. 'Thank you. We'll be in to see her tomorrow.'


	17. 18 December 2009

It was the end of another long therapy session, one piecing together things in his past to pinpoint the exact time that his alternate personalities were developed. It came to light that they'd actually come in over a number of years, years fostered by Dr Greene mostly, and Jackson was actually able to begin piecing together important events like his parents' deaths. He and his therapist were about to bid each other adieu when the other man spoke.

'Your wife went into labour yesterday,' said Jackson's therapist, an older man named Richard Masterson who spent his time between Bellevue and Manhattan Psychiatric.

Jackson stared into the distance, trying to do the math in his head. 'It's late December still, isn't it? She's not due until February.'

Dr Masterson smiled at him. 'I'm glad you remember that.'

'I've been making a good effort to cancel out the other voices and focus on the familiar,' he replied calmly. 'Are the babies all right?'

'They were able to stop the labour from progressing, but I have a feeling your Lisa is going to be in the hospital until after the babies are born.'

Jackson leaned forward in his chair, his hands clasped in his lap as he looked past them before glancing back up at Dr Masterson. 'Is there any chance at all that I can see her?'

The man tipped his head sympathetically. 'I don't feel safe yet letting you near her.'

The way he put the phase nearly broke Jackson's heart. For a fleeting moment, he felt his first alter try to come to the surface, but this time he actively suppressed it, trying to keep in mind what he had read about neutralisation in the papers he'd been assigned by the doctor. A sharp headache quickly found its way from his left temple to across his entire head, and when he finally managed to get himself together, he spoke in a hoarse, tired voice.

'When can I see her?' he asked, his tone quickly changing to begging. 'I need to see my wife. I need to make sure she's okay.'

There was a moment of conflicted silence before Dr Masterson spoke again. 'I'll talk to your wife and her doctors and see how they feel about it. You'll need to be chaperoned, but if they feel it's all right for you to visit her, you can. As soon as I get back to Bellevue, I'll make a point of speaking with them.'

---

Hediyeh had never been to Paris before, but she'd always heard stories about it from her father. He told her about sitting on top of a roof in the city smoking a cigarette as he looked over toward the Eiffel Tower, about standing inside the open cube of a monument called the Arche de la Défense when it rained, about chasing pigeons across the courtyard in front of the Sacré Coeur when no one was looking. Landing in de Gaulle airport brought all of these memories to the front as she walked through the delicate glass-topped terminal that he described in stories about flying to Africa. He always had breakfast at this one café in the centre of the terminal and talked about how the security guards always got snappy with American citizens when they tried to go through security at the checkpoint there.

She smiled as she watched an American man trying to go through the checkpoint, his shoes held in his hands and his laptop out for the scanner. Both of the security guards gave him odd looks before telling him to put his shoes on.

One good thing that Jackson had taught her was reading French. She wasn't the best at speaking it, but reading was no problem at all. Armed with a little Langenscheidt French-English dictionary that she got from Jackson for Christmas the year before, she looked at directional signs, trying to find her way to the RER station at the airport. According to a couple of maps she consulted on the flight, it was the B line she needed to find, and that line would take her to the centre of town, a station called Châtelet les Halles, where she could change to another line to get to the Gare de Lyon in the 12e arrondissement, or more specifically a hotel on the rue d'Austerlitz called the Relais de Paris.

Riding on the RER was absolutely no problem for the New York City-savvy girl. In fact, she realised with a smile, it was a billion times easier than the MTA system—the lines actually made sense rather than just seeming to be a huge network that was added on piece by piece over the years. She didn't seem out of place, didn't have a camera around her neck, wasn't looking around with wide eyes at each stop—in short, she looked like she was just a normal Parisian girl, a banlieuse, going from her house in the suburbs to go shopping downtown at Les Galleries Lafayette.

Once she got to the Gare de Lyon, she bought a ticket on the train to Geneva the next afternoon. When she started making the plans to go abroad, she laid out a very careful timetable to assure that she wouldn't move too quickly. She knew what she had to do, but she didn't want to jump on the fact. If she picked up speed, she might find herself suddenly on someone's radar.

---

'She is not on any of the flight manifests from any of the local airports, and none of the tickets issued at Penn Station match her either,' said Lyna, looking across the table at Augustine, who was basically working as the agent for the Rippner family.

'She's not stupid,' Augustine said, pressing her fingers harder to the sides of her warm cup as someone opened the door and let cold air into the café. 'There's no way she actually used her own name.'

'She is eleven years old,' Lyna replied with a disbelieving look on her face. 'There is no way an eleven year old was able to have the connections to establish a new identity, and it is doubtful that she was able to pass through an airport or train station without being noticed by someone.'

'She's an eleven year old who has already started her period and has the figure of a sixteen year old,' returned Augustine. 'I bet no one even batted an eye when she was travelling alone.'

'Fine,' Lyna said, leaning against the table. 'If you know Hediyeh so well, where would she be going?'

'If she's anything like her father, probably going out to get some revenge,' said Augustine as she set her mug down.

'Eleni is dead. For the love of God, if you are not going to drink this, I will,' replied Lyna, reaching over to take Augustine's mug and drink a large swig of tea. 'Revenge is finished.'

'Revenge is _not_ finished,' Augustine countered, putting a finger up. 'The big kahuna is still out there somewhere.'

Lyna paused. 'You said that the child is not an idiot.'

'She isn't.'

'What you just insinuated tells me that she is, in fact, an idiot.'

Augustine gave her a dry look. 'He's one old man. He's alienated most of his network, his main protector is dead after basically killing the only person close enough to the man to be considered his partner... I mean, he doesn't have much support, and she's a pretty pissed-off eleven year old.'

Lyna gave her the same dry look before draining her cup of tea.

'Hey, her adoptive father was kicking _ass_ at eleven,' Augustine justified. 'And she grew up with a bunch of terrorists. Who knows what she's capable of.'


	18. 21 December 2009

A/N: I can't even begin to explain how busy I've been. Just Google 'volta school for the mentally challenged' and you can see what all I've been working on, augh.

---

It was three days until Jackson was able to completely convince Dr Masterson and Joe that he was ready to visit Lisa. Even then, he was transported by psychiatric ambulance, completely strapped down, and watched over by two especially burly looking orderlies. Once reaching Bellevue, he was allowed to walk on his own, but the men stayed right behind him, so close that he could swear he felt them breathing on his back. Dr Masterson walked in front of them, guiding. They went through service entrances and took service elevators so they wouldn't run into anyone and didn't have as much worry that Jackson would be able to escape if he felt so inclined.

Once they entered the actual hospital and made it to the maternity ward, Jackson found himself almost regretting coming. He could tell by the looks on the faces of the doctors and nurses that every single one of them had been informed of his visit, and not a single one of them appeared to trust him in the least with the exception of the either very stern or very jaded head nurse. As Dr Masterson stopped at the nurses' station and talked to the head nurse, the men put their hands on his shoulders as though restraining him. He actively had to battle the urge to shrug them off.

'This way,' the head nurse said, coming around the desk. 'She's mostly been sleeping since she got here, but she's been awake for the last few hours. We've been trying to convince her to eat, but so far she hasn't touched anything.'

Jackson furrowed his brow as they followed the woman. 'How long has it been since she's eaten?'

'Don't worry, sir,' the nurse replied, but didn't look back at him. 'We've been giving her nutrients through her IV. It's very important that she stay healthy and hydrated so we don't have another scare like the other day.'

They came to a door and the nurse peeked in the window before pushing it open and allowing the group of men to walk past her. As she closed the door behind them, Jackson looked over at his wife's back—she was lying on her left side, her back to the door. The room was filled with the steady beep of the heart monitoring equipment, and Jackson found himself hesitating as he watched the slow drip of the fluid from the bag of her IV into the catheter.

'Mrs Rippner, your husband's here,' said the nurse, pushing past the men to go to Lisa's bed, picking up the clipboard at the end of the bed and reading the monitoring equipment before taking down some notes.

Without waiting for permission from the other men, Jackson slowly walked to the bed, moving around the nurse to come to Lisa's left side. She stared beyond him until he squatted down, looking her in the eyes. Focusing on him, she curled into herself a bit, and that made his heart ache.

'Hey Leese,' he said softly, reaching out to rub her face, but she recoiled. His hand hovered in the air for a moment before he dropped it to his side. 'Lisa, honey, I'm so sorry.'

'Let me get you a chair, Mr Rippner,' said the nurse as she put the clipboard back into the compartment at the end of the bed. There was a loud dragging noise as she brought a chair around to the other side, neither of the orderlies volunteering to help her, not that she'd allow them anyway. 'Here, if you sit, you'll be more at her level.'

He looked at her a bit sadly before sitting down and looking at Lisa, who was again avoiding his eyes. 'I'm trying very hard to get better for you.'

'You should want to get better for yourself,' she murmured coldly to him. 'Stop using me as an excuse for everything.'

Again he found himself having to fight the almost bile-like urge to reach out and retaliate against her. For a moment, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. 'I've been working a lot in therapy and making a very good effort to normalise.'

Lisa made a face at his stilted speech. 'Is that what the therapist told you to say?'

It was like she was testing him, trying to draw out his angry personality, but he had convinced himself before coming that he wouldn't allow himself to be overcome by her again. If anything, he needed to put on a good show to everyone so they'd be convinced that he would be able to function in the real world. 'I'm still working on regulating everything.'

Reaching out again, he managed to take one of her hands before she could pull it away. Surprised by his fast movement, Lisa screamed and tried to push back, nearly throwing herself off of the bed. The orderlies and nurse immediately jumped forward, the men preparing themselves to intervene and the nurse keeping Lisa from toppling off.

'Lisa, please,' he said, holding tighter to her hand. 'Please, honey, please.'

'Go _away_!' she replied, tears running down her face as she tried to pull her hand out of his grip.

'Calm down, Mrs Rippner,' said the nurse as she rubbed Lisa's hair. 'We're not going to let him hurt you, everything's all right.'

'This might be a bad idea,' offered Dr Masterson. 'Why don't we—'

'Dr Masterson, if you don't mind, this is my patient,' responded the woman, looking back at him before returning her attention to Lisa.

Jackson was thoroughly convinced that this woman was the mythical skinny white version of Sharena, and he was loving it.

'Dr Masterson sent us a copy of your husband's chart, and he's not lying—he's making a lot of progress in therapy,' explained the nurse as she rubbed Lisa's back. 'Now just breathe.'

Still staring at Jackson, Lisa took a shaky breath and relaxed.

'It's all right Mr Rippner,' said the nurse with a smile. 'You have to understand that she's a little jumpy since she woke up. Pre-term labour leads to something that's a bit like post-traumatic stress disorder.'

He nodded to the woman before looking down at Lisa, giving her a sad smile before leaning forward and finally pressing the back of his knuckles to her face, wiping away one of the tears falling down her cheek.

'There we go, Leese,' he said as she pressed her face against his hand.

Jackson froze, his hand poised on her cheek. All at once, he realised he'd been on the other side of this. More than once, he'd been the crazy one, the one so angry and yelling, and she had come up to him, her hand pressing to his face, speaking in a soft voice to bring him back. He realised the desperation she must have felt every time he did this, longing for him to understand where she was coming from and for him to just calm down. There was an awkward misunderstanding caused by the mental and emotional gap between the two, and Jackson suddenly found himself wondering how the hell they'd stayed married for this long. If the tables had been turned, he realised the he would have left her ages ago or perhaps never have become involved with her in the first place. Who wants to be involved with a crazy person, a person who is completely unpredictable? He had a flashback to the day he left, the fight he had with Melissa. _Do you think this is normal?_

His face tensed, and for a suspended moment, the men from the psychiatric hospital seemed poised to jump on him and pull him away from his wife, but surprisingly, Jackson instead started crying. He took his wife's hand, pulling it to his face as he bent down, rubbing his face against it as he kissed the ends of her fingers between sobs. Lisa looked quietly at the top of his head, furrowing her brow as she bit the inside of her lip.

'It's okay, Jackson,' she murmured, but that just made him cry harder.

He scooted to the end of his seat, his forehead resting on the side of her stomach. Lisa pulled her hand out from under him, laying her hand softly on his head as she began crying too, although much quieter than Jackson. The nurse crossed her arms, trying to pretend she wasn't in the room, and after watching for a moment, Dr Masterson just walked to the door, leaving his patient behind with the others. A minute later, the nurse followed him, and even over the sound of crying and the machines, the sound of the two talking in the hallway could be heard as a low murmur.

'I'm so sorry,' he said, nuzzling against her. 'God, I love you so much.'

'Hediyeh's missing,' Lisa said, and Jackson turned his head to look at her, his face red from crying.

'What?' he asked softly.

'She's missing,' she replied in a choked voice. 'On Tuesday, Chapin called and said she never came into school.'

'Tuesday was the day...' he murmured, his fingertips pressed to her lower abdomen.

'Augustine and Lyna are working to find her,' Lisa whispered, her voice strained.

'Dammit,' he managed after staring at her. 'They've checked—?'

'Airports, train stations, harbours,' Lisa replied. 'I haven't talked to them, but Daddy has been able to keep me a little updated over the last couple of days.'

'Right, Lyna--'

Lisa immediately interrupted. 'She was able to track you.'

He sat up. 'If she was able to track me, why didn't she—'

'She's on the no-fly list,' Lisa continued. 'Everyone who could follow after you has been put on it.'

His mouth dropped open as he turned his head, rubbing her waist gently as he thought. 'Hediyeh would be on the no-fly list.'

'What?' Lisa asked, finally letting out a little laugh. 'She's eleven.'

'Poulain knows she's just crazy enough to do something.'

Lisa gaped. 'You've been keeping something from me.'

'The same day I got Augustine's birth certificate, I got a DVD,' he said, standing and then slipping into the bed with her. Their noses were just about an inch from each other when he spoke again. 'It was one of the training videos for Hezbollah, and Hediyeh was in it. She... she decapitated a man, and then just smiled at the camera and waved before going to the back of the line and cocking her AK-47. She's completely trained to be a terrorist.'

'Where would she be going then?' asked Lisa. 'Would she even know where Poulain is?'

'She'll probably go for Eleni Pe—'

'She's already dead,' Lisa interjected.

'Nitsa is...?'

'She died the day you went into the hospital.'

He tipped his head forward just slightly to press her forehead to his. 'She's in Geneva.'

Lisa tensed up. 'Is she in danger?'

'She'll be moving slowly. There's no way she flew directly into Geneva. I bet she went to Paris, Frankfurt or London, some big city, and she'll go from there to her final destination,' Jackson said, opening his eyes and focusing on hers. 'I did the same thing when I was working. Leave a kind of muddled trail.'

There was a paused before Lisa leaned forward, pressing her lips lightly to his. Once the little impromptu kiss broke, she spoke. 'You have to go after her.'

'Lisa, I can't...'

'I want both of you home before the babies are born,' she replied, pressing a finger to his lips. 'No one but you will be able to accomplish that in the time I have.'

'Lisa, no, you have to understand,' Jackson continued, his fingers brushing against the pad of her finger. 'I'm not set for release yet.'

'Take Augustine with you.'

'She's on the no-fly list.'

'Give her Eleni's papers.'

Jackson both loved and hated Lisa's train of thought in this instance. He had a vague recollection of some identifications he found in the pockets of his coat, identifications for people named Christian and Solange Poulain, a Swiss married couple.

'Yeah... Augustine's going to have to pretend to be pregnant,' he said, thinking back to the photograph on the identification. 'I don't think Eleni weighed more than about eighty-five pounds, and it's _very_ apparent in the photograph. Thank God her height isn't written on there... there has to be a difference of at least eight or nine inches between the two of them.'

'I'm sure we can work something out. She can wear some of my maternity clothes, and since she's in the medical field, she can probably get one of those fake stomachs they make the high schoolers wear to scare them away from sex.'

Jackson found himself laughing at the thought of the horrible suits they brought to his boarding school, thinking more specifically about the look on Melissa's face when she wore one of them. 'Well, we have that worked out, but what about the problem of me being discharged?'

'Gisa's a psychiatric nurse. Tell your therapist that she'll keep a good eye on you.'


	19. 23 December 2009

A/N: Happy New Year, everyone!

---

During the evening only two days later, Jackson sat in a well-tailored suit on the hard plastic seats of the airport, watching the people pass. Security had been easy with a fake pregnant wife—before they were able to say anything to Augustine about the mismatch between her picture on the ID and her face in person, Jackson pulled one of the officers aside and explained in low tones that she'd been very weepy lately about how much weight she'd gained, so she was bound to break down sobbing if anyone mentioned it. To keep along with the rouse, he assumed, Augustine had immediately run to the bathroom when they got to the gate. As she spent her sweet time in there, he twiddled his thumbs and waited until she appeared, adjusting one of Lisa's pregnancy outfits over the empathy stomach she'd requisitioned from the hospital. With her brown, wavy hair, she looked like a taller, heavier Lisa, so it was absolutely no problem for him to treat her like his pregnant wife.

'Are you feeling all right, Solange?' he asked in warm French, jumping up to help her sit down slowly.

'Malade comme un chien,' she murmured, and Jackson had to admit, either she really was sick or she was just a fabulous actress. 'I'm sure I'll feel much better when we get home.'

Jackson gave her a worried look, sitting down beside her and rubbing his hand down her hair and upper back, resting it right before her lumbar spine began. As he sat back completely in his chair, Augustine leaned over and put her head on his shoulder with a little moan. Trying to look as normal as possible, he picked up his hand from her back and laced it around her shoulders, pressing the hand against her arm.

When they called for their flight to begin boarding, he and Augustine were the first ones on the plane. He fussed over her, asking about everything from the position of her pillows to whether or not she was feeling like she might go into labour, and during his parental tirade, he had Augustine laughing once or twice. It was good to have her seem calm, even for a couple of moments, because it helped _him_ remain as calm as possible.

After the flight took off, Augustine watched the New York skyline pensively and Jackson reclined his chair, letting himself drift off as he watched Augustine's profile against the dimly lit glass. Sensing him watching, the much younger woman turned and looked at him with a smile as his eyes closed. Before he completely fell asleep, he could hear her asking the stewardess for a blanket in very accented, slow English. A moment later, the fleece fell over his shoulders and he drifted off to Augustine whispering in his ear.

'Don't worry, you'll all be back together as a happy family before the babies are born.'

When he next became lucid, he immediately realised he wasn't in the same place or even the same time for that matter. He felt like the omniscient author lording over his characters as he watched himself sitting in an aeroplane seat. As he stood in the aisle, people moved freely about as though he weren't there. He took a step closer and waved a hand in from of his doppelgänger's face, realising that it was obvious that he couldn't be seen by a soul. With furrowed brow, he looked at the double's arm and then hand, seeing an olive-toned hand slipped into his own. His eyes traced up the woman, watching her look out the window with a severe amount of boredom.

'It's like being an errand runner,' she muttered distastefully, and the dream Jackson turned to face her.

'Well, we're almost finished, aren't we?' he asked, but unlike the current-time Jackson, the double didn't squeeze the woman's hand reassuringly. He didn't have a clear idea as to whether it was because he didn't like the woman or if he just didn't have the emotional framework to do something like that, but it still came across as odd.

'Six down, two to go,' she said with a dark, slightly crazed smile.

'You can't really count Osikowicz and Crome,' he said with his eyebrows raised. 'Suicide never counts in this game.'

'I beg to differ,' she replied. 'I consider suicide to be a mark of a job well done. Instil enough fear in them to off themselves without any work from us.'

His double laughed. 'Good point, Nitsa.'

'Oshodi, Machogu, Pedram, Chaiyasan,' she said in a sing-songy voice. 'Valencia and Watson, then back to Geneva!'

'São Paolo and Los Angeles,' he said, leaning back against the chair. 'It's been a very long time since I've been to either of them.'

'New York City,' Eleni corrected.

'Hm?' he asked, turning to look at her.

'New York City,' she repeated, giving him an odd look. 'The office is in New York City.'

Jackson shook his head. 'No, I oversaw the location change from New York to Los Angeles before September 11th.'

'Yeah, well, they moved back a few months ago,' she said with that same boredom before turning back and looking out the window.

Jackson could see the confusion come over his double's face right before a stabbing headache invaded his cranium. Letting go of the woman's hand, he pressed both of his hands to his temples, leaning forward forcefully in his seat. Jackson had a sudden flash of what he remembered at that moment: sitting in their living room with Lisa and the kids on a Sunday morning reading the newest issue of the _New York Times_ in which there was an article detailing the move of the Society headquarters from Los Angeles to New York. Instead of showing concern for her seatmate's sudden dive forward, Eleni rolled her eyes and leaned forward herself, digging through the bag at her feet and withdrawing a syringe. Sitting back up, she prepared the syringe before reaching over and pulling one arm of his coat off of his shoulder, exposing just his much thinner shirt. Without a second thought, she drove the needle into his arm and emptied it before withdrawing it and slipping the cap back on. Reaching up, she pushed the call button for the stewardess.

'Yes, Mrs Poulain?' asked the woman as she walked up.

'I don't have a sharps container. Is there any chance you can hold this until we get to the airport?'

The woman paused for a moment before reaching out and taking the syringe from her, staring between the limp Jackson and the needle.

'He has recurring migraines,' Eleni explained with a smile. 'I'm a medical doctor, so I'm lucky enough to be able to give him intramuscular chlorpromazine.'

'Oh,' the woman replied, trying to look as though she had any clue what chlorpromazine was. 'Do you need anything for him?'

'I think we have it handled now, right Christian?' she asked softly, reaching over and pulling Jackson up. His head lolled to the side and she nodded. 'See, just a minute later and he's already sleeping like a baby.'

'Wake up.'

Jackson shot forward, blinking against the sudden light that flooded his vision. Next to him, a surprised Augustine had pressed herself against the wall, a hand on her chest.

'I'm sorry!' she gasped. 'I didn't mean to scare you!'

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and leaned to press his forehead against the seat in front of him. 'Nightmare.'

'I figured as much,' the young woman replied, calming herself. 'We're landing in a few minutes, so you need to bring your seat forward.'

He nodded, resting for a moment before leaning back and letting his seat pop into its upright position. With an exhausted smile, he looked over at the nurse, pressing his hand to her false stomach. 'Did you both sleep well?'

---

The once thriving office was now suffering from a distinct lack of people. It was lonely, cold and more than a bit dusty, and as of recently, even the sparse calls they received from their two remaining agents had ceased. Phoebe Couturier was the only remaining employee of the organisation, and she too would have been terminated had it not been for the family ties between her and the man who sat in the office just behind her desk.

For a moment, she thought he'd fallen asleep, but then he started coughing harshly once again. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the sound before focusing back on the computer in front of her. For a huge gap of time, their agents in the field had been missing in action, and although she assumed them dead, her grandfather kept pressing her to keep an eye on flight manifestos in the hopes that they were just in hiding for the time being.

Lo and behold, as she began to scan the Air France manifesto for a night flight from LaGuardia, the very two names she'd been wasting more the last two weeks looking for popped up. After a long, staring pause, she pressed the print button and watched the papers her grandfather had so been longing for whirr out of the machine. Picking up the warm papers, she took a couple of quick strides to the door and threw it open, not even bothering to announce herself before crossing the room and setting the papers down on the side table next to the man reclined in a bed, an oxygen mask strapped to his face.

'Monsieur Poulain,' she said to him. 'Jackson and Eleni's aliases have shown up on a flight from New York to Zürich.'

Poulain took a deep breath from the oxygen mask before pulling it from his face and giving a weak smile to the woman. 'I told you.'

'Don't talk,' she pleaded, reaching over to put the mask back on his face. 'Would you like me to track them from Zürich and pick them up once they arrive in Geneva?'

'They know to come here,' Poulain replied from behind the mask. 'Or at least Eleni does.'

Right at the end of the last word, he started his hacking cough, and Phoebe jumped back in abject horror as blood splattered onto the plastic mask. After the initial terror, she took a cloth from the table and pulled the mask off, wiping the inside of it carefully as she looked at the frail old man. It was hard to believe that he was once the head of a thriving international organisation with thousands of employees at his beck and call.

'Why don't you go get some sleep, dear girl,' he said when she placed the mask back on his face. 'Once Eleni and Jackson get here, I'll have them call you.'

She seemed unsure, but gave him a light smile. 'I'll just be a few doors down.'


	20. Christmas Eve 2009

Something confused Hediyeh about the comings and goings from the World Society office. She knew that there was a man named Poulain who supposedly ran the entire operation, but she only saw a bottle-blonde woman leaving the building, and not even she seemed to get out often. From her hotel room across the street, she couldn't see much through the building's windows, just really when lights turned on and off. As dusk fell over the city, the lights in one of the front windows of the building turned on and stayed on for a few minutes before whoever was in the room closed the blinds even tighter and turned the lights off. With a disappointed grunt, Hediyeh dropped her binoculars onto her chest and walked over to the bed, throwing herself upon it and crossing her arms.

When she first made the plans for the trip, it seemed easy. As a young girl, she had no problem mutilating already-dead bodies and watching the training of new recruits, but now that she found herself having to do the actual planning of a killing, she realised how important it was to have a manager like her father. She knew that if he were in charge of this operation, he'd have all the blueprints for the building, the identity of the woman who kept coming and going, some sort of heat detector to see if other people were in the building with the woman, et cetera. In short, she felt completely useless.

As footsteps began walking down the hallway, Hediyeh's ears perked up. Despite doing an impressive job covering her trail, she was always convinced that someone she talked to was going to call child services or the police to report her travelling alone. It didn't matter than her ID said she was sixteen, she just knew that someone would realise she was still incredibly young or that one of the people from either her former life or her father's former life would identify her and report her.

'I already know the layout of the building, so really all we need to do is just start keeping track of who is coming and who is going,' said a man's voice, and Hediyeh's heart skipped a beat. She jumped out of bed, running directly to the door and unlocking it before throwing it open and stepping into the hallway.

Tears gathered in her eyes as she looked down one side of the dingy hallway then the other, finally seeing Jackson as he turned around to find the source of the noise. Letting out a little squeal, she ran down the hall and jumped at Jackson, who managed to catch her and hold her close to his chest.

'Daddy!' she sobbed as he adjusted her against him for a better grip.

'Hedi, God,' he said into her hair. 'You scared us so badly!'

'I'm sorry, Daddy!' she replied. 'I just wanted to help!'

From her place next to Jackson, Augustine reached up and rubbed Hediyeh's back. 'It's all right, Hedi. Hey, you were able to get us to come all the way out here, weren't you?'

Hediyeh seemed surprised that it was Augustine talking to her. Through her own curtain of dark hair, she looked her nanny up and down. 'I thought you were Mama. Did you marry your boyfriend? Have I been gone that long?'

Augustine looked down at herself and laughed, Jackson joining with her as he pressed his face against Hediyeh. 'We had to use aliases to travel, and Augustine had to use someone else's ID.'

'And this brings up a valid question,' continued Augustine. 'You used my name, didn't you?'

Jackson tipped his head back to look at Hediyeh, who was looking suddenly sheepish. 'I figured that they updated their files so that your birth name wouldn't be on the no-fly list from the Society.'

'Aww,' said Augustine, patting the girl on the head. 'And Lyna said you weren't smart.'

Hediyeh slipped down out of Jackson's arms and looked up at him seriously. 'There's one woman who keeps going in and out of the building. She's a little younger than Mom, about as tall as Augustine, and has dyed blonde hair. When she comes back from wherever she goes, she has things like groceries, files, medication—'

'Medication,' repeated Jackson pensively. 'What kind of medication?'

'The bottles said "amoxicilline,"' she said with a little smile.

'Poulain had a lung removed last year,' said Augustine with a shrug. 'Lung cancer.'

'Anaïs told me,' Jackson replied. 'He developed pneumonia right before she killed herself.'

'There's no way it's still the same illness,' said Augustine incredulously. 'Anaïs has been dead for months. If he still had pneumonia, he... there's just no way. He's old, he has one lung—if he had pneumonia still, he'd be, well, dead.'

'But if he were dead, she wouldn't be taking medication and oxygen tanks in, right?' asked Hediyeh, looking at both of them with wide eyes.

'Oh,' said Augustine quietly. 'Oxygen tanks?'

Hediyeh nodded and then all of them looked with wide eyes down the hall at a person who came out of his room, walking uncomfortably by the group before going to the lift. After the doors slid shut, Jackson put his hand on Hediyeh's back, guiding her to her room's door and turning the key.

'Better to talk inside,' he explained quickly as he pushed her in, Augustine following before Jackson walked into the room, shut the door, and locked it behind him. 'Now what were you about to say about oxygen tanks?'

'Well, I mean... if he's going through oxygen like candy, that can't be good,' she said as she walked to the bed and fell back onto it. 'He's gotta be circling the drain by this point.'

Jackson watched for a long moment as Augustine raised her hand into the air and spun her finger around over and over again before dropping her hand back to her side. 'We came all the way to Geneva to kill a man who is already dying _without_ our intervention?'

'There is a lot more attached to this than just wanting to kill him,' snapped Hediyeh, unexpectedly shoving her father. 'I want him to _know_ what he's done, I want him to _know_ how much he hurt Maman, I want him to _know_ that I hate him!'

He bent down to look at Hediyeh in the eyes with a sarcastic grin on his face. 'And you know, Hedi, he really could not care less.'

With a huge intake of air, Hediyeh pushed forward and knocked Jackson back. He stared at her, stunned, as his daughter walked to the dresser of the room and pulled a semiautomatic pistol from the top drawer. After checking the magazine, she gave a dark look to Jackson before going to the door and unlocking it. She threw it open, not even bothering to close it when she stomped into the hallway. Jackson took a long time to respond, not moving until he heard the door of the elevator roll open. He stepped in the hallway just in time to see it slide shut and immediately ran to the fire escape door, looking through the little window on it just in time to see the girl running down the next flight. He yanked on the door to find that Hediyeh in her great madness had managed to jam the door.

'Shit!' he yelled as he kicked the door, looking back to see Augustine standing looking out of the hotel room. 'Stay here, Augustine. I want you to watch everything from the room and if you feel like something's happened, call the police.'

She didn't argue, just nodded and went back into the room. Stepping back, Jackson took careful aim at the door and kicked it as hard as he could. It budged slightly, so he took aim again and kicked it even harder two more times before it flung open. There was basically no delay before he began sprinting down the stairs after his daughter.

When he got to the lobby, however, she was already nowhere to be seen. As he ran across the place, he could see that she wasn't even on the street any longer. Cursing under his breath, he slammed against the front doors of the hotel and ran onto the street, sliding across the hood of the car of a very surprised and more than moderately upset driver. When he landed on the other side, he immediately made the final dive to the front door of the building. Hediyeh had shot a hole in the door, shattering the entire pane of glass covering it and destroying the lock in the process, so it was insanely easy for him to just walk in.

He crunched over the glass before speaking in a harsh whisper. 'Hediyeh!'

Leaning forward, he looked both directions down the hallway before turning to the left and immediately taking a right to go up a flight of stairs. Framed in the light coming through a window on the landing was his daughter, her entire body locked into position as she pointed the handgun up the stairs at something or someone he couldn't see. Freezing on the second step, he tried to make out any shape on the glass, but all he saw was the dark outline of someone standing on the landing above. Crouching down, he waved his arms to try and get Hediyeh's attention. Her eyes flittered down to him for just a moment, but it was enough time for him to put his hands in the shape of a gun and point to himself.

Closing her eyes, Hediyeh dropped down her arms and took a deep breath before throwing the gun down the stairs and dropping to the floor. After catching it, Jackson barely paused before shooting directly above him. Plaster from the ceiling rained down on his head before he ran up the stairs, turning immediately to aim the gun at whoever was standing on the landing, but he found once he got up there that the person had fallen. For a moment, he thought he'd miraculously managed to actually kill someone through a ceiling, but right as he started to mentally congratulate himself, the person stood and limped to the railing.

Much to his surprise, he was faced with the familiar face of Phoebe Couturier.

From what he could see in the half-light radiating from the window, her hands were covered in blood and it was her foot he'd managed to pierce from below. If she had a gun in the first place, she'd obviously dropped it on the floor, so he slowly lowered the gun in his hands to meet her eyes. Hediyeh, on the other hand, stayed down on the ground, only looking through the railing to see what Jackson had managed to do to the woman.

'Phoebe,' Jackson murmured.

'You're not with Nitsa,' she said softly.

'Nitsa is dead,' replied Jackson stiffly, raising his eyebrows.

Phoebe nodded jerkily. 'We wondered where you'd run off to.'

'I went home,' he responded simply.

'And now you're back for revenge?'

He considered it for a moment. 'No.'

She gave him a pained look, leaning heavily against the rail. Hediyeh finally stood up, squeezing herself between Jackson's arm and his waist. He rubbed her back nervously as he held the gun laxly to his side.

'I just want to know why,' Jackson said finally. 'Why now? Why not before I met Lisa? Why not before Jonathan was born?'

'He tried to kill you when you were still in the hospital,' Phoebe said, obviously trying to make him feel better.

'But then you were sent to help me,' he replied quickly.

'It was like a game between Anaïs and my grandfather,' she said to him. 'I got put on Anaïs' team because she contacted me before Eleni did. We just fulfil whatever contract we're given—you know that.'

He pinched his lips together, but Hediyeh could tell when she looked at his face that he completely understood where Phoebe was coming from.

'You know my wife is pregnant,' he said with some difficulty. 'And you also know it was a hard pregnancy even before you let Eleni push Anaïs to kill herself. I just...'

'It's because he's so sick,' Phoebe said. 'You left him, and he—'

'We had an _agreement_,' Jackson replied strongly, lifting his hand from Hediyeh's back to point at Phoebe emphatically. 'I signed all the papers, I agreed to everything that was stipulated in the contracts, I never asked for help from the Society—'

'You had Lyna working for you!'

'I didn't _ask_ Lyna to work for me!' he said, breaking away from his daughter and walking up the stairs.

'You accepted her help and that was a breach of contract,' she replied with more than a little malice. 'You broke the contract you signed, and that left you open to taking jobs again.'

'That... that's a bunch of shit!'

'It's a handy little loophole.'

Jackson glared at her. 'I didn't accept this job. I didn't agree to go around the world killing people again.'

'You signed the contract for the killings,' she murmured, backing up a little from him.

'Under duress.'

'Not under duress.'

He narrowed his eyes before speaking through his teeth. 'Signing something under the influence of diazepam is the same as signing something under duress.'

They entered into a glaring contest before Jackson spoke again, not breaking his stare.

'Hediyeh, go back across the street right now and stay with Augustine,' he said quietly.

'But Dad—'

'_Now_,' he interrupted. 'I have business to deal with, and I don't need you here distracting me.'

With a theatrical sigh followed by a little whimper, Hediyeh carefully stepped to the edge of the landing, looking at the two before slowly going down the stairs. Jackson kept his solid position as he listened carefully for the telltale sound of crushing glass to let him know that Hediyeh had begun her crossing of the road in front of the building. Once the crunching stopped, he lined up the gun again and pointed it at Phoebe before bending down at scooping up the gun she'd been holding, sticking it down the back waistband of his pants.

'Take me to see him,' he said coldly.

Phoebe swallowed audibly, holding her blood-covered hands up as she began to walk slowly away from him and down the hallway towards Poulain's office. It was completely dark in the hall except for the rectangle of light coming from the antechamber of the office. Once they reached the door, Phoebe turned left and walked in, Jackson following very close behind with the barrel of the gun pressed against her hair.

Directly in front of them was Anaïs Vioget's desk, the brown leather chair behind the ornate desk sitting empty. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could remember the first time he managed to make it to Geneva, being greeted by the very pleasant Pointee woman immediately. As he sat down in one of the chairs in the corners of the room, she'd brought him coffee and biscotti before going in to inform Poulain of his arrival. She was always hospitable and professional, and thinking about how horribly she was treated near the end was painful for him to think about. She was his protector.

Even as Phoebe moved behind the wall that the desk was against, Jackson lingered. There was the click of one of the two doors to Poulain's office opening, and as Phoebe opened it and paused to look back at him, he could hear the sound of coughing and ragged breathing.

'What happened?' came a weak, breathy voice, and Jackson snapped from his musings.

Phoebe was silent as Jackson's hands slipped into Poulain's view, the gun pressed to her forehead. 'Step forward.'

Closing her eyes and biting her lip, she moved sideways to let him in behind her. Immediately, Jackson's nose was stung by the smell of antiseptic and medications, but it wasn't until he took his eyes from Phoebe and looked toward the old man that he realised just how dire the situation was.

He didn't have any clear recollection of Poulain's condition during his fugue, but he was moderately sure that he must not have spent much time around him because even in a fugue state, he had a feeling this wasn't something he'd easily forget. The man's skin was paper thin, every vein apparent. He'd wasted away, every wrinkle seemingly growing deeper as he lost weight. Held to his face by a weak hand was a blood-streaked mask attached to an oxygen tank, but the moment he saw Jackson's attention turn to him, he dropped it.

When Phoebe suddenly moved, he cocked the gun, but when he saw that she was walking over to Poulain, he lowered the weapon. Bending down to her grandfather's bed, she carefully picked up the mask and wiped the blood out with a wet rag before placing it gently back to his face. After staring for a moment, Jackson put the safety on the gun and slipped it into the waistband of his pants next to Phoebe's service weapon. He walked over to the bed, standing about a metre from Poulain's feet. The old man looked at him with tired blue eyes as Phoebe sat down in the chair next to him, taking her grandfather's hand.

'Hello, my boy,' the man managed.

'Hello,' Jackson replied awkwardly, not entirely sure how to respond.

'Jackson came to say good-by,' offered Phoebe, bending down closer to Poulain's ear. 'He's found his way home to his family.'

Poulain nodded slowly but did not speak again.

'What was the point of all of this?' Jackson asked, taking a couple of steps forward and putting his hands on the footboard.

'You left,' Matthias replied. 'And I don't trust anyone else.'

Pressing his lips together, Jackson looked off to the side. 'So it's over?'

'It's over,' he said softly. 'They're all gone.'

Jackson nodded, closing his eyes. 'You'll leave us all alone now? No one will come take me, no one will be watching my every move?'

The man shook his head.

Looking up again to watch Matthias, Jackson's jaw tensed and he raised his eyebrows, trying to stop his eyes from tearing up. 'And when you're gone, everyone will leave Leese and our kids alone?'

A little smile came over Matthias' face as Phoebe looked over at him, squeezing his hand. 'Your son and daughter will be born into a completely different world.'

'I have to know,' Jackson said. 'You didn't plan for me to come ho—'

'I did,' the old man replied. 'I warned Watson.'

'Warned her about what?' asked Jackson, leaning forward a bit.

'That Nitsa was coming,' he said before coughing, bloody greenish phlegm again splattering on the mask. He collected himself as Phoebe gave him a sad look and again took the mask to clean it off. 'The day, the time, the place. I knew she would kill Nitsa.'

Phoebe placed the mask back on his face. 'Papy, you need to stop talking so much.'

'Oh, what's the point, my Phébi?' he asked softly. 'We both know it's over.'

She gave him a pitiful look before taking his hand again and frowning at Jackson.

'I knew that you could do the job the best, but also knew you wouldn't accept it,' he said to the younger man. 'Nitsa promised that she could get you back for me.'

'My wife is pregnant, and you took me away from her,' Jackson hissed more vehemently than he'd originally intended.

Poulain closed his eyes. 'I expected to live a lot longer than this, my boy. Sometimes timing doesn't work in anyone's favour.'

Reaching up, Jackson rubbed his eyes before putting the tips of his fingers against his lips. 'I hurt her. I tried to kill her. And then our daughter decided to come after you for revenge and Lisa was so stressed, she went into early labour. I think in this case, the timing worked out a lot better for you than it did for my family.'

'You were always a better manager than I was,' admitted Matthias with a laugh. 'I didn't make any allowance for deviations in my plans for this. I thought you would go home and everything would just go back to normal for you.'

'It's because you've never had a family,' Jackson said, looking at the man with an odd mix of pity and spite. 'You have no idea how everyone is affected by something like this and how much it hurts to feel as though you've been abandoned by someone you love completely unconditionally.'

Phoebe sniffled quietly, reaching up to rub at her eyes. Jackson raised an eyebrow at her, wondering exactly what it was in his impromptu speech that would make her cry.

'You're like Lucien,' Poulain explained. 'Both of my boys abandoned me for love.'

'I'm sorry,' Jackson said awkwardly.

'Nothing to be sorry for,' Matthias replied before coughing lightly. 'I loved my job, that was my life, and you just went your own way.'

Jackson laughed softly. 'And now the Society is defunct.'

'You were right,' the old man said. 'People are becoming accustomed to assassinations and terrorism, so we can't send a solid message anymore. There's no point to our existence. What was it you said? Any yahoo?'

'Any yahoo with a bomb strapped to him can do what we were supposed to do,' Jackson said. 'People don't need to pay managers and assassins anymore, and they haven't needed to for years.'

Matthias Poulain nodded again. 'I held out hope.'

'Let justice be done, though the world perishes,' Jackson replied, thinking about the seal of the Society, an emblem he'd seen more times than he could count starting from that moment he first saw it on his files in Dr Greene's office.

'_Nescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia regitur mundus_,' said Poulain back to him, and when Jackson just looked at him, confused, he translated. 'Know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is ruled.'

Jackson smiled at the man's subtle poke at his own ineptness in recognising the end. 'Don't be too hard on yourself.'

'You were very good, my boy,' Poulain said after a long moment. 'Better than any other employee. I'm happy you're doing what you love.'

'Banking?' Jackson asked gauchely.

Poulain laughed at him before continuing slightly lasciviously. 'Your wife.'

Phoebe and Jackson laughed quietly and then silence filled the room before Poulain spoke once again.

'Phoebe will be taking care of all of my final arrangements,' said Poulain slowly. 'Once you leave here, you have no other obligations.'

'Thank you,' he managed.

'I have one last thing to ask of you,' Poulain continued quite seriously. 'But I would like for my granddaughter to leave the room.'

Jackson looked at Phoebe. For a moment, she seemed like she was going to fight leaving, but once she looked at the sternness in her grandfather's eyes, she leaned over and gave him a little kiss before standing and walking to the door, looking back at Jackson as she walked out of the room. Once the door clicked behind her, Poulain focused his attention on Jackson once more.

'You have a gun with you,' he stated.

'Two, actually,' said Jackson, patting his back with a half-smile.

'I want you to shoot me,' he said incredibly calmly. 'My granddaughter seems to think I can last forever like this, but I'm tired. I just want you to come over here and shoot me in the temple.'

Jackson's eyes widened as he rested his hand on one of the guns. 'Are... are you serious?'

'I don't lie about things like this, my boy,' Poulain replied, giving him a comforting smile. 'Please, I ask nothing else of you.'

After looking down at the floor for a moment, Jackson pulled out the gun Hediyeh had brought with her and took off the safety, checking the magazine just as the girl had in the hotel room. He closed his eyes as he put it back in place and walked to Poulain's side. Taking a deep breath, he straightened his arm and pressed the barrel to Matthias' temple.

'Let's just hope you have better aim than you did in Abuja,' the old man said with a laugh, and Jackson smiled.

'I'm really a surprisingly good shot,' he replied, slowly putting tension on the trigger.

'Never lie, Jackson,' Poulain said, closing his own eyes.

'I never do,' he said back. 'Thank you.'

Looking at the calm face of his former mentor, Jackson finally squeezed the trigger, not even flinching at the discharge. As blood began creeping over the pillow from the head wound, Jackson stood completely still, even when Phoebe came back into the room sobbing. Pushing past him, she put her hands on either side of her grandfather's face before dropping down to put her forehead on his chest. As he watched her, his own vision growing slightly cloudy, Jackson dropped the gun in his hand and then pulled Phoebe's service weapon from his pants and placed it quietly on the chair next to the bed. Numbly, he turned away from her and walked out of the office.

Once he left Anaïs' office, he felt the most immense catharsis he'd ever felt in his entire life.


	21. 28 December 2009

A/N: I'd sort of forgotten that I didn't finish posting this. So... here's a bit more. Getting close to the end!

--

Jackson didn't go into detail when he told Augustine and Hediyeh that Matthias Poulain was dead. Augustine, being the more mature of the two, just let the issue go, but Hediyeh pestered him until she fell asleep that night. Three days after arriving in Geneva, the three of them were catching a train to Paris, tracing back Hediyeh's journey across the European country. They spent one night at an airport hotel, then early the next morning, they caught a plane straight from Paris to New York City. Their seating arrangement was a carbon copy of the Rippners' departure from Germany a few years earlier, Hediyeh sitting across the aisle from Jackson and Augustine staring out the window beside him.

Although he was never very fond of her or her family, Jackson found himself holding Augustine's hand as she squeezed his reassuringly. Just that little contact between the two told him that he could sleep, that Augustine would assure nothing was going to happen, so he slept, only waking up when she shook him at the gate at LaGuardia.

Apparently at some time during the flight, Augustine had airphoned Lisa's parents to let them know where and when to pick them up, because once they stepped out into the sloshy snow around the airport, Carol ran up to them and gave them all tight hugs before pointing to the car. None of them had luggage, so it was very simple to just pack everyone in.

'Gisa, dear,' said Carol with a smile. 'You look absolutely gorgeous with that pregnancy outfit on. I'm sure you would look even more beautiful with that glow.'

Augustine blushed, shifting uncomfortably. 'Um... thanks?'

'I know you're young, but you should start thinking about these things,' said Carol, and Jackson began to realise that she was speaking more for his benefit that to give Augustine advice. 'Lisa waited _forever_ to get pregnant, and I think it would have been a lot easier for her to have her babies. Of course, it would be easy for you to have babies because you have such good, strong, child-bearing hips.'

Augustine squeezed her eyes shut with embarrassment. 'Dr Bellamy...'

'I just think you should propose such a thing to your boyfriend.'

'He's not my boyfriend; he's Bosco's doctor,' said Augustine, suddenly realising that she hadn't made any arrangements for her cat to be taken care of when she was out of town. 'And besides, he's nine years older than me! He's already a doctor and I'm still in college.'

'I'm five years older than Lisa's father,' said Carol. 'The important thing is to have the mother be healthy and young so that she is better at both childbirth and in the genetics of the baby.'

'Augh, Grandma,' Hediyeh said, smacking a hand against her face. 'Enough already. We already have too many babies and we don't need more.'

'I appreciate the advice,' said Augustine, rubbing her hands on the fake stomach. 'Perhaps one day I'll have kids, or perhaps I'll help you with the new babies and get so sick of children that I never want to see one ever again.'

'Either way sounds good to me as long as you just stop talking about this right now,' replied Hediyeh, slumping against the car door.

The rest of the ride home was completely uneventful, and considering the time of day, it was actually not all that trafficy. They made good time, pulling into their underground parking garage about thirty minutes after leaving the airport in Queens. Both Augustine and Hediyeh claimed first dibs on showers, so Jackson just went into the living room and sat across the floor from his son. For all he could tell, Jonathan didn't really comprehend that his father had been gone for a certain amount of time and rather just smoothly returned to what he felt was normal. By the time Augustine called down to tell him the shower was open, the two of them were building a Lego Tower of Babel. Giving his son a kiss, Jackson walked past his father-in-law and up the stairs. Joe followed a few steps behind him.

'Once you shower, it would probably be a good idea to go update Lisa on what happened,' Joe said as Jackson changed into his robe. 'I have a feeling that within the next few days, they're going to have to induce labour. Lisa's just not doing well. She's developed hypertension over the last couple of days and they're watching her carefully to assure they won't have to do an emergency c-section.'

'I'll be quick,' Jackson replied from in the shower. 'Can you stay here with the kids and Augustine?'

'Of course, I figured you'd want to go visit alone,' Joe said with a smile. 'Dr Masterson will be at Bellevue, so he can check you over and then take care of your discharge sheets.'

'Two birds with one stone,' said Jackson.

--

When Jackson walked into the maternity ward, he felt like he'd been jettisoned into the past. He wore a navy pinstripe suit, a new one without the bullet holes and blood on it; a sea green shirt, also replaced; and a normal t-shirt undershirt. The maternity ward made him very uncomfortable, seeing all the pained women screaming their doubts and problems to aching husbands. Lisa's maternity suite, however, was completely silent. From the door, he could see that she was propped up in a double bed. To his left, there was an entire living area with a television, chairs and a table. He walked in a little further and almost immediately, Lisa looked up from the book she was reading.

'I figured if I'm going to be here for awhile, I should probably be a little more comfortable,' she said, and Jackson crossed over to her, leaning over to give her a deep kiss.

Besides the beeping of the monitors attached to Lisa, the room was very quiet, which stunned Jackson considering the sheer number of women squalling down the hall. When their kiss broke, Jackson pulled a chair up beside her and relaxed, reaching out to rub her hair and stomach before just leaning forward more and lying on the bed next to her. For the first time in months, he felt as one with his wife. In the last week, he'd managed to get the okay from his adoptive father regarding being married to Lisa, he watched the World Society completely dissolve on paper and was able to come home to love on his wife, never having to worry about Societal dangers ever again.

'Everything's taken care of.'

'Good,' she said moderately sharply before picking up the book from her chest. 'Let's discuss names.'

He raised his eyebrows at the segue. 'Aren't you going to ask what I did, how I know that everything's going to be all right, if I—'

'Could not care less,' she replied dryly. 'I'm going to assume for the time being that you really did take care of everything, but right now, I don't care about anything besides stopping calling the babies Baby One and Baby Two.'

Jackson tipped his head, having to suppress the remnants of alter one in the sheer absurdity of the moment. 'All right, names it is.'

'That's a good husband,' she said with a smile, reaching down to put her hand atop the one he had pressed to her abdomen.

Feeling her hand atop his gave him something to focus on, and he could feel the narcissistic rage slipping back to the depths of his psyche. 'Have any ideas?'

'We already have Jonathan Noah and Hediyeh Mahdis,' Lisa murmured, stream of conscious. 'So no J names or H names.'

'Or L names,' he continued. 'It's bad enough that we have two J's already.'

'And we can't have any lame connected twin names,' Lisa said darkly as she looked over at him.

'You actually think I would fight you on that?'

She grinned. 'And nothing outlandish.'

'But nothing too common,' he replied importantly. 'Especially not the popular girl names. Madison? Ava? Isabella?'

Looking at her husband, Lisa carefully ran a line through something on the page.

'Oh God, Lisa, what the hell name were you going to use?'

'Isabella?' she said uncomfortably.

'We're not _Italian_,' he replied with raised eyebrows. 'Try to keep it in the nationality of your ancestors. Does your sneaky little list there have anything German?'

'Annaliese.'

'No "Leesa," Lisa.'

'Hedy,' she said before looking at the word. 'Right, already have a daughter named that... and then you said no Ls...'

She crossed off some names before turning the page and shrugging.

'Adalia?'

Jackson opened his mouth to say something but instead became very pensive. 'Adalia.'

'Adalia,' Lisa repeated with a smile, putting a check mark next to the name. 'And now the boy.'

He was probably going to hate himself later for the recommendation, but he risked it anyway. 'Matthew.'

'Difficulty choosing a girl's name, but not a boy's name,' replied Lisa, obviously none the wiser.

'Naming girls is a woman's job,' he replied snarkily before smiling at her.

She flipped a few pages, finding the name and marking it. 'Adalia and Matthew.'

Silence came over them again and Jackson quickly began to realise what a toll the last couple of weeks had had on him emotionally and physically. Scooting forward, he pressed his face to her shoulder and sighed as Lisa set down her book and looked down at him. Slipping her hand off her stomach, she raised it to his hair and carefully combed her fingers through the still damp strands.

'They'd like to induce as soon as possible,' she said in a soft voice. 'Both of them are positioned correctly, so I think we'll try for a vaginal birth, and if there are problems, then maybe do a c-section.'

Jackson sighed again. 'Isn't it still too early?'

Lisa laughed a little. 'Twins are basically always early.'

'But this is _very_ early,' he murmured into the sheets.

'Only five weeks,' she said with a shrug. 'I think we did pretty good.'

'I fucked up things a lot,' he responded.

'Yeah, you did,' Lisa said plainly, and he turned his head to look at her. 'But I forgive you. We have our little, funky happy ending just like we always seem to.'

He smiled at her.

--

Jackson had never really noticed Trump Parc before. He'd visited the Museum of Natural History a handful of times with the kids, gone to Central Park on dozens of occasions, and sat around for long periods of time at the Borders just a couple of blocks down the road. He must have walked by the building at least three or four times, but nothing about it ever caught his attention—he normally just ignored overly showy things, and the entrance to Trump Parc was no exception with its huge golden awning.

Inside, he breezed past the mirrors and marble and straight to the reception desk. The woman on duty looked up at him with a smile.

'May I help you?'

'Yes, I'm here to see Lyna Ruzicka.'

'Of course,' the woman replied, pulling something out of a drawer in front of her. 'Miss Ruzicka left a key for you. Her apartment number is on the key, and the elevators are straight behind you.'

'Thank you,' he said almost sarcastically, as he could see the elevators in the massive mirror behind her.

He walked away from the receptionist and to the already-open lift, punching the button for the twenty-eighth floor before looking down at the key until the elevator chimed and the doors opened. Turning to his right and then immediately to his left, he went to the door of Lyna's apartment and stuck in the key, slowly turning the lock and peering in.

'Lyna?'

'I am in the kitchen,' she replied in a slightly harried voice. 'You are early.'

Jackson looked down the length of the studio apartment. 'I decided to come from my house to here, then to the hospital.'

Stepping in, he closed the door as quietly as possible before setting down the rucksack full of day-to-day things he'd gathered from home. He raised his eyebrows as he looked at the utter chaos of Lyna's apartment—he'd always assumed she was as fastidious about her living arrangements as she was about her arsenal of assault weapons. He took a couple of steps toward the kitchen as Lyna walked out with a dishcloth held to her face.

'Christ, are you sick?' he asked, immediately pulling out his handkerchief and putting it over his own mouth. 'I swear to God, Lyna, if you get me sick and I can't be with Lisa during—'

'I am not ill!' came her muffled voice from behind the cloth. 'I do not have my makeup on!'

Jackson didn't seem convinced. 'That's stupid.'

She groaned before dropping the cloth onto the floor. 'There, are you happy?'

'Holy shit,' he said, looking taken aback. 'You're... you're... a _human_?'

She gaped at him only a moment before shoving him. 'Ass.'

'Come on, let's just sit down and discuss,' he said as he pointed to the messy living area.

Lyna hesitated, looking toward her bathroom before following him with resignation. He took a seat in the exact same spot his wife had months earlier and she once again rolled over her computer chair to face the other person in the apartment.

'So how is Lisa?' Lyna asked, picking up a mug of tepid coffee and taking a cautious sip from it.

'Her blood pressure lowered when Hediyeh and I got home, but over the last few days, it's started going up again,' Jackson replied, leaning on the arm of the couch with his hand holding his head up. 'If they can't get it under control by tomorrow, they want to induce as soon as possible.'

Lyna looked at him blankly as she took another sip. 'I am confused by all of this pregnancy terminology. What do you mean by "induce?"'

Whenever Lyna didn't know a word in English, it made him feel like the dominant one between them. He could tell her any meaning, any nuance that he wanted to, and just see how she'd later use it for his amusement. Now, however, did not seem the time for mind games despite how much he loved them.

'It means they'll give her medication that will force her body to begin the labour process,' Jackson explained. 'After they give it to her, it could be anywhere from two to eighteen hours before she actually gives birth.'

'This I find to be far too much work,' said Lyna, setting down the now empty cup. 'I do not approve.'

'And that's why you're—' he began, but could feel the bile-like personality rising, so he just closed his eyes and concentrated.

Unlike in the past, Lyna just sat quietly until he calmed himself down. 'Would you tell me about Geneva?'

'If you promise not to discuss it with my family,' Jackson replied as he opened his eyes. 'This is purely business.'

'Purely,' she said with a nod.

'I'm sure you've already heard that Poulain is dead.'

'I was told by Augustine,' Lyna responded. 'She also told me that Poulain's pneumonia had not subsided, but rather had become much worse.'

Jackson swallowed, pressing his lips together uncomfortably. 'He was in pretty bad shape. His granddaughter was giving him injections of amoxicillin and had him on tanks of oxygen, but talk about delaying the inevitable.'

'So he miraculously died of pneumonia when you were there,' she said with nary a questioning tone as she stretched her legs out and placed them atop Jackson's thigh. Crossing her arms, she spoke once again. 'That was very boring. What is it... "I hope you found twenty dollars?"'

'No,' Jackson said sullenly as he lifted his hand to play with Lyna's manicured toes. 'I wish that had been how he died, but he had to go down in a blaze of glory.'

'Are you serious? How did he do it?' Lyna asked, but before he could respond, she continued. 'Did he light a bottle of his oxygen on fire? What was the explosion like?'

'Not a literal blaze,' Jackson said, giving her a smile. 'No, he had me take care of it.'

There was palpable silence as he rubbed each of her toes in succession, focusing carefully on the shiny lacquer that mirrored a tiny image of Lyna looking past him.

'How?' she asked, unsure.

'Hediyeh had a gun with her in Geneva; I don't know how she got it. Some unimportant story points, then Poulain asked for his granddaughter to leave the room. Once she did, he... well, he asked me to shoot him.'

'And you did?'

'And I did.'

Again, the silence. Lyna watched carefully as Jackson played with her toes some more, then frowned at him. 'You are not doing well.'

'I'm doing fine,' he replied in a half voice before reconsidering. 'It's a lot to deal with.'

'Have you remembered anything from being gone?'

'I remember killing Chaiyasan, and then a few things about the flight to kill Valencia. I also remember Eleni telling me that Crome and Osikowicz committed suicide,' he replied in an almost dreamy tone. 'I know I have to have gone to Africa at some point because Machogu and Oshodi are dead.'

Slowly, she pulled her legs from him and placed her feet on the floor. 'Would you like some tea?'

'You're nicer without makeup on,' he replied dryly, and she stretched her leg up to jam him in the shin before standing and walking to the kitchen. He heard her putting a coffee pot on to boil. 'Lyna?'

She peered around the corner.

'Phoebe said that by accepting your help back when Hezbollah was after us, I voided my resignation contract,' he said. 'Did you know that was going to happen?'

'Yes, but you never asked,' she stated quite matter of factly. 'It was like a game. Did Lisa not tell you?'

'About what?'

'The contest,' she replied, walking out enough to stand in the hallway and lean against the wall. 'Anaïs versus Nitsa. Anaïs said that after the accident, you should be allowed to live, but Nitsa thought you were a threat to the Society. To make it a fair fight to determine fate, Poulain let the two of them do what they wanted, the victor was whoever managed to do whatever to you.'

'That's horrible.'

'Why?' Lyna said as she made a face. 'You did the same thing for years.'


	22. Morning, 23 January 2010

Adalia and Matthew ended up being those odd twins born on two different days. Adalia was born just before midnight on 18 January, and Matthew was born about twenty minutes later on 19 January. Despite being born a few weeks too early, both were very healthy and didn't have to be put on ventilators but were kept in the hospital for three days regardless. There were some advantages to being self-pay instead of going by the timetable of the insurance company, and very extended hospital stays were just one of the little perks.

When the twins and their mother finally made it home after their long absence, there still hadn't been anything in the newspaper or on the television about Matthias Poulain's death, but there also had been a dearth of information on the deaths of the regional heads, so Jackson wasn't at all surprised. Despite outward appearances, the World Society was always as secretive and closed off as a communist country. If the dictator was sick, no one knew it because it would expose critical flaws.

'News will come eventually,' Lisa assured him quietly as she sat in bed nursing Adalia, Matthew beside the bed in a bassinet. It was nearly one in the morning, but as parents learn very quickly, babies are in an entirely different time zone. 'It's a really big organisation, so people will notice it's missing. Something like that can't close without word getting around.'

Jackson stared at the television for a little while before reaching up and turning it off. 'They didn't say anything specific in the news when they started closing down field offices.'

Lisa shrugged as she reached over and rubbed Matthew's head. 'Well, it doesn't really matter anymore, does it?'

He turned to look at her. 'I'm not going to be convinced that organisation is over until I read it or see it on the television.'

'For the love of God, Jackson,' Lisa said angrily. 'You put a gun to the man's temple and shot him. This is just a guess, but I'm going to have to assume that means he's _dead_.'

'Even if _he's_ dead—'

'Give it up,' she said succinctly. 'I don't want to hear anything more about this.'

'It involves—'

'Stop!' she said sharply before speaking quietly again. 'Stop it, just stop it.'

He put a hand over his eyes and sighed before turning away from her once again and walking to the door, dropping his hand down to put it on his hip. 'I'll be in my office.'

Lisa watched him as he opened the door. 'Jackson, wait.'

'What, Lisa?' he asked, slumping forward a bit.

'When I was in college, I took this boring literature class,' she started, and he sighed.

'Honestly, I don't care.'

'Will you just shut your mouth and listen to me?' she asked as she carefully took their now-sleeping daughter from her chest and set her in the bassinet next to her brother. She slipped to the edge of the bed and stood, quickly walking to him as she straightened her pyjama top. 'We read this stuffy old collection of essays by a guy named Robertson Davies.'

He closed the door softly before turning to look at her, leaning against the door with his arms crossed. 'And what's so important about him?'

'It's not him who is important,' she replied, looking him straight in the eyes. 'It's something he said in the collection. It's the only thing I remember about the entire book.'

'And what was that?' he asked patronisingly.

'He said "the world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past,"' she said, nodding her head back and forth like any person reciting something from memory. 'I always wanted to go back before I got raped, to be a happy little Daddy's girl, but if I did that, I wouldn't be here right now. Everything we do affects who we are as people. When you left, I had to adjust, but I never found myself wishing that we could go back to the way it was before. If you hadn't have disappeared, you'd still be sick, still be working long hours at Crédit Suisse instead of being here at home, everything.'

She took a step closer to him, pressing her hands on his upper arms.

'You need to move on from that, all right? If you don't just let the past go, you're going to go back through it,' she explained. 'You have a lot more to live for now, so don't keep wasting your energy on this. Things that are supposed to happen will happen because there's no one playing God anymore in your life. He's gone.'

'You've been reading too many self-help books.'

'I'm serious, Jackson,' she said sternly, squeezing his arms. 'I'm not going to just lay back and let you get wound up again. I should have caught you long before you wandered off, but I didn't, and I'm never going to make that mistake again.'

She gave him the tiniest smile before looking back at the babies who still remained solidly asleep.

'Come on, help me get them back into bed.'

---

Apparently fate's time limit on news was six days after Lisa's diatribe. Lisa, hoping to get Jackson more involved so that he would be _forced_ to forget about the Society, had started having him go with her to take the kids to school. With a baby in a sling on each of them, they walked hand-in-hand as Jonathan and Hediyeh kept a good ten feet ahead of them. They'd become masters of small talk—after all, the walk from their house to the day care centre wasn't far, but the train ride to Chapin tended to be, so there was a huge gap where they could just chat about nothing in particular.

On warm days, after dropping the kids off, a certain freedom came over them; from the dreaded Upper East Side they took the subway to Battery Park. Once there, they spread out a blanket on the green grass overlooking the Hudson. The babies were released from their slings, Lisa lay parallel to the riverfront, Jackson sat perpendicular to her legs, and the babies were settled in the crux between the two. The twins were like cats and usually fell asleep once placed somewhere still—the little peanut-shaped humans had little interest in trying to actually move places. They were content just to be outside where it was quiet.

Picking up Adalia, Jackson scooted over and leaned back, laying his head on Lisa's stomach. The little bit of leftover pregnancy weight made her abdomen softer and more inviting. Nuzzling into her, he lowered Adalia down onto his chest before scooping Matthew to his side. Being early morning on a workday, just fifty feet from them was unbridled insanity as people tried to get to their office buildings, but the trees and the lull of the splashing Hudson helped drown out anything. As they lay looking at the sky, a ferry to Ellis Island left the pier followed soon by one heading towards the Statue of Liberty, which was a bay away from Jackson's heels.

'How do you feel today?' asked Lisa in her best therapist voice as she reached down to brush his hair back from his face. 'You're very quiet.'

He rested his hand against Adalia's back, looking at the tuft of dark reddish hair atop her head. 'I have a meeting after lunch today.'

Her hand paused in his hair. 'You didn't mention that to me.'

'I didn't know until this morning,' he admitted, turning his head to look at her chin as she continued looking up at the clear sky. 'I got a call very early when you were still helping the kids get ready for school.'

He could hear a hitch in her breath like she was going to say something, but she remained silent.

'I have to sign some papers,' continued Jackson. 'All of the business that could be done in Switzerland has been done, but there are just, you know...'

'Little details,' she murmured.

'Little details,' he repeated. 'So I have a meeting with my lawyer in Switzerland and the executor of Poulain's estate. They're flying in later today.'

'Please take someone with you,' she said, pushing herself up enough that his head slid down into her lap. 'Ask Lyna, or—'

'The meeting is at our house,' he interrupted, looking up at her as she stared down at him. 'Don't worry, they'll be gone before Augustine gets home with the kids.'

'What are they having you sign?' she asked suspiciously, narrowing her eyes.

He smiled a bit as he closed his eyes. 'Nothing can be closed without my permission.'

'Right,' she said, giving him a little laugh. 'You're _that_ special.'

'I'm serious,' he said as he sat up, Adalia held tightly to his chest. He turned around to look at her again. 'Legally they can't do anything until my signature on the dissolution papers.'

She stared again. 'Is that some sort of unspoken rule between you Mafioso types?'

'Phoebe is his heir, but I'm the heir apparent of the World Society,' he explained as Lisa picked up Matthew, cradling his head as she held him against her chest.

'You act like it's a monarchy,' she replied to him, scooting forward to sit right next to him on the blanket.

He shrugged and silence fell over them. After a couple of minutes, Lisa leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder.

---

That afternoon, Lisa stood at the elevator when the doors open, Adalia held in her arms. The two people in the lift had been chatting, but as soon as they saw Lisa, both immediately stopped. The woman looked at the lovely little barf rag on Lisa's shoulder with distaste, and the Turkish man seemed to just generally ignore her.

'I'm sorry, Jackson had to go change clothes unexpectedly,' Lisa said hurriedly. 'Would you like to sit down in the living room, or in Jackson's office?'

The two of them looked at each other, then the executor spoke. 'We would prefer the office.'

'Of course, of course,' said Lisa, adjusting Adalia so that she could gesture down the hall. 'It's right this way.'

They followed her down the hallway, neither of them offering to open the door for her when they got to the office. Lisa leaned against the door as they walked past, both looking around at the dark office. With the baby still held to her, Lisa went to the opposite wall and opened the curtains, letting in the sun to light the room.

'Please, make yourselves comfortable,' she said as she edged open the curtains. 'He should be—'

'Sorry to be running late,' Jackson said as he walked sleekly through the door completely calmly.

'That's all right,' said the older female lawyer. 'We arrived a bit early.'

'Lisa, this is my lawyer, Marion Arnaud,' Jackson said. 'And this must be Phoebe's lawyer.'

'We would prefer your wife leave the room,' said the executor almost clinically, not bothering to even look towards Lisa.

Keeping his face emotionless, he looked at Lisa and gave her a nod. 'Take the twins up to our room. If Matthew wakes up, I don't want to be able to hear him down here.'

'It's a nice day,' Lisa said quietly as she walked over to the door of the office. 'We'll be up on the roof patio when you're done.'

When the door closed behind her, Jackson gestured to the seating area in the centre of the room. The two barristers sat down, each beginning to spread papers from their briefcases across the coffee table. There was a massive document, Poulain's last will and testament, that the executor kept in his lap. Equally large were the dissolution papers for the World Society that Marion set down in front of him.

'We are of course more concerned with the dissolution than in the reading of the will,' Marion said in French as she pushed the document closer to him. He picked it up. 'You may either read it yourself or I can give you a précis.'

'I'll scan it,' he replied absentmindedly as he began flipping through the pages. For a moment, he looked up. 'Is Mlle Couturier joining us today?'

Marion gave him a diplomatic smile. 'Mr Karaca is her representative.'

A long pause. 'You know, it's probably a better idea to just give me the précis. Let's keep this meeting as short as possible.'


	23. Afternoon, 23 January 2010

The day had continued to be absolutely beautiful, the weather warm and sunny, but from her view on the sixth floor of the building, Lisa could see across to New Jersey, where clouds promised either rain or snow. At her feet, Adalia was sleeping in a baby carrier that Lisa was rocking with her extended foot. Matthew, who had been more than colicky and had been kind enough to throw up all over his father before the meeting, was held to her chest as he finally began to quiet down, his little face red and streaked with tears. As the much cooler wind began to pick up, she bent over him and kissed his head, vaguely aware of the door to the patio opening. There were slow footsteps before Jackson came around and sat in the chair next to her.

'Did it go well?' she asked as Matthew started drifting off, trying his best to keep himself awake.

He didn't say anything, just sat pensively. Adalia had opened her green eyes to look at the vines wrapped around the canopy, reaching for an odd cluster of flowers hanging from the very top. Jackson watched her, carefully taking in every little move of her pudgy little hands, listening to the little cooing noise she made as she stretched against the belt of the carrier. With a comforting smile, he bent down and unbuckled her, carefully picking her up and supporting her head as he lifted her to the wisteria. She slowly pulled one of the leaves down, looking at it with her brow furrowed and her lips puckered. Jackson walked back over to his chair, sitting down before holding Adalia on the end of his knees so he and his wife could watch her play.

The baby squeezed the leaf then looked at her green-tinged hand. She looked between the hand and leaf a few times before holding the leaf out to her father. Cradling her head in his hand, he took the leaf, tracing the edges with his eyes as he turned it over. Lisa watched him as he twirled it in front of Adalia's face, the little girl giggling when he got it close enough to wisp across her nose.

'Are you tired?' Lisa asked quietly, reaching out to brush along his face with the back of her knuckles.

'Not particularly,' he replied. 'Just very relieved.'

'So it went well,' she stated calmly.

'Very well,' he said, looking over at her and nuzzling into her hand. 'The press will be informed of both Poulain's death and the dissolution of the Society. They've also made up a partially true story about one of the employees losing her mind and killing all of the regional heads. Part of my contract stipulates that my name will not be mentioned in any of the press released by the Society.'

She smiled at him. 'No one will bother us.'

'No one,' he replied smoothly. 'Now we can just be that very boring family you've always wanted us to be.'

'Not boring,' she said. 'Just vaguely normal.'

---

A/N: And finally, exactly two years after I started posting it, Toccata and Fugue is over, haha! I'll reposting Heir Apparent now, seeing as I've had a lot of requests for it...


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